Bambu Lab P1S Review: The Best Enclosed 3D Printer Under $700

The P1S is a refined machine. Where the A1 is an open bedslinger, the P1S is a fully enclosed CoreXY unit with a rigid aluminum and polycarbonate frame. The enclosure door opens on a smooth magnetic latch, and the interior has proper lighting for monitoring prints. Everything about it communicates premium build quality — the kind you'd expect from a machine twice the price. The AMS (Automatic Material System) unit sits on top of the printer and feeds up to four filament spools through a PTFE tube system. The filament-cutting and splicing mechanism is impressively reliable. In four months of testing, we had exactly two failed color changes, both traced to kinked tubes.

In terms of print quality, the P1S matches or exceeds every printer we've tested at this price. Bambu's vibration compensation and pressure advance tuning produce clean surfaces even at 300–400 mm/s. At maximum 500 mm/s, there's some reduction in surface quality for demanding geometries, but for practical prints, 300 mm/s produces excellent results with minimal artifacts. Layer adhesion is exceptional across all tested materials. PLA and PETG prints are indistinguishable from much more expensive machines. The real story, however, is engineering materials.

This is where the P1S earns its premium over the A1. We ran identical ABS test prints on the P1S and a modified open-frame printer with a DIY enclosure. The P1S produced zero warping on every print. The DIY enclosure failed on prints with large flat bases. ASA (outdoor-grade UV-resistant plastic) printed without issue at 240°C with the bed at 100°C. Nylon PA6 was more temperamental — we recommend pre-drying filament for 4+ hours — but produced strong, slightly flexible functional parts once dialed in. The active heated chamber maintains temperature consistency that passive enclosures struggle to match.

With the AMS, the P1S produces genuinely impressive multi-color prints. The color-change process involves purging old filament into a 'poop chute' before loading the new color. This wastes ~5–10g of filament per color change depending on the model's color distribution. For models with many color changes, print times extend significantly. A miniature that takes 2 hours in single color may take 3.5 hours with 4 colors. That said, the output quality is remarkable — especially for text, logos, and artistic models.

Bambu Studio continues to be the best slicer we've used. The one-click presets produce excellent results for beginners, while the advanced mode exposes all parameters for experienced users. Remote monitoring via the Bambu app lets you watch prints and receive failure alerts. The proprietary ecosystem is the one genuine trade-off. You cannot use PrusaSlicer or Cura with native Bambu features (though community plugins exist). For most users, Bambu Studio is so good this is a non-issue.

The P1S is for you if you need to print engineering materials (ABS, ASA, Nylon, PC), want multi-color without the compromises of open-frame systems, or demand the highest reliability at near-consumer prices. It is not the right choice if you want full open-source control, need a larger build volume than 256³ mm, or are primarily printing PLA and PETG (the A1 handles those equally well at $300 less).