Is this Creality’s answer to the A1?
Tom’s Hardware Verdict
The Creality Hi Combo is a premium 3D printer with a well-built design and four color material system. It can’t print TPU, it takes up a good bit of real estate, and is priced higher than the competition without being obviously superior.
$449 at CrealityOfficialStore $499 at Amazon Check Walmart
Pros
- +
Color
- +
Speed
- +
Roomy build volume
- +
Excellent build quality
- +
Super sticky build plate
- +
Reliable auto bed leveling
Cons
- –
High flow hotend creates a lot of waste
- –
Won’t print TPU
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Creality finally put the Ender 3 name to rest with the launch of a new, multicolor bedslinger it’s calling the Hi. It has a 260 x 260 x 300 mm print volume, which is slightly bigger than an Ender and more in line with Bambu Lab’s roomy 256mm³. The machine is reminiscent of Creality’s Ender 3 V3 KE, but with the style of the Ender 3 V3. If you found that confusing, then be thankful that we’ve moved on to this new naming convention.
The Creality Hi Combo is the color machine I was expecting from Creality a long time ago, but we got the K2 Plus multicolor 3D printer first. I’m not sure why it took so long to get around to updating their bread and butter: the affordable bed slinger. The Creality Hi Combo retails at $599, which is a bargain compared to the K2 Plus, but still about $50 more expensive than its direct competition, the Bambu Lab A1.
The Hi has all the things I love about the Ender 3’s final form: it’s a well-built, quality machine, with Klipper-inspired firmware and a native slicer that performs well. Creality has not made the Hi Open Source yet, but the company has a track record of eventually releasing the source code on their machines. This may not mean much to the average user, but it’s everything to the hardcore Creality fans.
My one fault with this machine is its inexplicable inability to print TPU, even when I bypassed the CFS unit. There also wasn’t a profile in Creality’s slicer, which makes me think the engineering team also couldn’t make it work.