I have never actually tried printing off the device itself, the touch screen is very confusing. I always submit print jobs over the network via OrcaSlicer. But yes, that is exactly the kind of thing I meant when I said it has some odd quirks.

If you zoom in to 1m resolution and then slowly zoom out, you’ll see the name change back and forth several times. Very odd.

Weirdness: The default g-code for the machine does silly things like park the nozzle over the build plate letting it ooze, instead of over the nozzle wiper/waste container.

The filament change routine is strange, requiring you to remove the bowden tube to cut the filament every time. This is easily fixed by printing a filament cutter and using that to cut the filament.

The bowden tube rubs against the top plexiglass lid for the machine, requiring you to print a riser for the lid to avoid it getting all scratched up.

The door for the machine is an odd shape design with no handle making it a little annoying to get a grip to open it.

The filament holder they include is a very bad design, flexes heavily with a full roll of filament and I have had spools fall off several times while printing.

The touch screen menu isn’t very intuitive and it can be very laggy at times.

Good features for the price point: Fully enclosed with built in chamber heater.

Pretty decent auto leveling system.

Timelapse camera.

Runs klipper/mainsail and input shaping is pretty cool.

I have around 500 hours on mine and I haven’t had any prints fail that were the fault of the machine so I’m pretty impressed by that. And I find the features and capabilities to be pretty great for the price point. They just could use to do some polishing of the design

I have a Qidi Q1 Pro and I’m pretty happy with it. Very fast precise prints and pretty reliable. There’s definitely some strange design decisions and weird quirks to it and Bambu machines feel way more polished. Overall I’d definitely recommend the Qidi machines but they are not quite as simple for people with no 3d printing experience. They are very feature rich and amazing printers for the price.

Whats a reputable source to compare ratings/reviews for these machines? Do you have any personal recommendations?

Fair enough, I guess I just end up needing to fix things for other people way more than the average person. And more often then not, a multi tool saves me a trip to my car tool box. Its mainly just the blade, and pliers that get a lot of use. But the scissors and file get used quite a bit, too.

I’m almost curious what kind of life you live? You never find yourself in a situation where having a knife, screwdriver, pliers, or a flashlight on you wouldn’t be a huge convenience?