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So my printer has died.

An old kobra max 1 with a fried circuit board of some kind. Near impossible to get the right part to replace it. I need to replace it with something that's cheap and has a print volume thats over 12 inches. So I narrowed it down to the Elegoo Neptune 4 Plus and the Anycubic Kobra 2 Plus.

But then I read a chat room and someone says Elegoo is garbage. And then I read another message board that say's the Anycubic was terrible. And I watched a YouTube video that says they both suck! Now I don't know what to think! Does dakkadakka have any opinions? Has anybody else here seen a comparative difference between the two or is it a 'six of one and a half dozen of the other' kind of situation? It's all very confusing.

They're both Chinese companies, they both bulk produce printers, they both have the same mediocre customer service when stuff goes wrong, they both have good models of printer and bad models of printer.

They really are two like for like in many regards. The only difference is that Anycubic -tends- to be a little more innovative in terms of product line (DLP printers and the like) whilst Elegoo -tends- to be slightly cheaper.

I think with FDM printers the most important factor in how satisfied you will be with your purchase is how tired the factory worker putting it together happened to be.

I've owned two Anycubic Megas and now I'm on a Neptune 4 Plus, they're all great except when they aren't, it's FDM, random gak breaks all the time.

I have an Anycubic M3 resin printer. I know its not quite the same as your looking at, but I'd buy it again in a heart beat (considering upgrading to the M7 as it has a larger build plate). I've had the printer for almost two years and it runs almost daily. Not a single mechanical problem, its been an awesome printer.

Just one guys anecdotal opinion/experance.

the cheap chinese printers are all the same, and all of them need some level of tinkering and all of them don't care about older machines once the new gen is out (so getting replacment parts is only easy of those are common of the shelf parts, anything special made is going to be a pain) and all of them just copy what others are doing so you get the features of the more epxensive ones 1-2 generations later for less

which comes to the last point, there is no consistancy for the brands but you need to compare the different machines as depending on what they copy and how they implement it what is good and what is garbage changes with every single machine they sell

If you found the Neptune 4 Plus as the one suited because of the size and price, the only other option I see is the Sovol sv06 plus (similar bed size and price) and the best would be to look at some Youtube reviews of both to decide which one suits you more