Creality Ender-3 Pro VS Alfawise U30 Pro - Which is the better budget 3D printer?

Don’t judge me that I’m a little late to the game, especially with the Ender-3, though I just didn’t have luck with newly released printers in the past. Having troubles with a 3D printer right out of the box, especially if you’re new, can be really frustrating, so I chose two printers that have been on the market for a while and shouldn’t have these first batch problems anymore. The Ender-3 is probably the printer most talked about and probably also the most sold of 2019. I chose the Alfawise U30 Pro as a second contestant in the comparison because the price is similar but it seems to offer quite some features that the Ender-3 Pro doesn’t have but also lacks some. But how will they really compare in the end?

Just to be fully transparent. Both printers were provided by Gearbest, free of charge, though everything you hear in this review are my own thoughts! So let’s dive right in. The Ender-3 Pro is usually available in the lower $200 range, often even purchasable from local vendors where you safe on shipping time and import taxes. The Alfawise U30 Pro, which is just a rebrand of the Longer LK4 Pro, usually costs a little bit more than the Ender but is still well below $300. Prices and inventory fluctuate a lot, especially right now, so check the different sources to get the best deal. I’ve linked a couple of vendors down in the description for you to compare prices.

Assembly

Both machines come nicely packed as a kit, with lots of foam padding. Assembly is quite simple and mostly well described in the multi-language, color manuals. The boxes contain all tools that you need to assemble and operate the printer. The kits take around an hour to build in which you assemble the gantry, add the bed, and plug in a couple of wires that are nicely marked with sleeves. There is no fiddling around with mains voltage necessary, so you don’t have to be afraid of getting shocked. The Ender-3 Pro guide was a little more straight forward especially with naming the sizes of the screws, though I had some issues when putting the power supply into place and it’s still a little close to the bed, what you can see from the wear marks. Assembled, the Ender-3 Pro uses around 45x51cm of deskspace; the Alfawise requires a little more on the side due to its stiff tubing and occupies 45x56cm.

Build

Before we power them on, let’s take a look at the features and appearance. Both do look quite similar, and you can’t omit that the U30 is a close copy of the Ender-3 besides some changes. Both are build up from 20x20 and 20x40 aluminum extrusions, and the linear motion is handled via V-slots and plastic rollers. The X and Y-axis are belt driven, and the Z-axis that can reach 250mm is actuated by a single lead screw, which works fine at that size. Unfortunately, there is no mechanism to tighten the belts installed, and the only way you can apply proper tension is quite fiddly.

Print Bed

Both beds are leveled using four nuts below the carrier. Unfortunately, the smaller ones of the Alfawise make the adjustment more fiddly. The beds are obviously heated and can reach temperatures up to a good 100°C. The beds that are 220x220mm in size feature a sheet of fake BuildTak, which makes 3D prints adhere to it very nicely even at temperatures far below what you’d usually use. PLA can easily be printed at 40°C saving energy. The problem is that parts stick so well to it, that it’s often difficult to remove them after printing. The Ender-3 Pro tackles that with it’s flexible and magnetic printbed that makes the removal process way easier and is one of the outstanding features of that printer. The Alfawise U30 Pro has the plastic adhesion sheet applied to a piece of glass, which makes removing the prints really hard from time to time. At some point, I even started to turn it around, and directly print on the glass, on which I applied Aprintapros PrintaFix. An upgrade to a flexible printbed is something that I’d seriously consider for the U30 Pro. Both beds were quite flat and varied only around 0.1mm in height, which is excellent for good first layer adhesion. They also seem to keep their level quite well over the couple of hundred hours I used them, and I rarely had to readjust the nuts. The Alfawise is more critical in that regard because you sometimes add quite some force when you remove prints.

Big nuts for bed leveling on the Ender-3 Pro

Extrusion System

Both machine have a very similar extrusion system with a feeder located on the left side of the X-axis and a Bowden tube that guides the material into the hotend. A single knurled gear pushes the material, the other side is only a ball bearing idler. The material sits on the top of the printers on a spool holder which makes the machines more compact but also results in the filament rubbing and potentially chewing through a part of the feeder. The Ender-3 tackles that with a metal insert, whereas the U30 has nothing in that place. If you don’t put the spool on an external holder or adjust the filament path yourself, this will, at some point, destroy the tensioning arm. The PTFE tube reaches all the way down to the nozzle in the hotends, which limits them to maximum temperatures to 250°C but still gives you the possibility to not only print PLA but also higher demanding materials like PETG and ABS are possible. I even printed Polymakers PolyMax PC on the Ender. The only problem here is the print surface, that can stick too well to those materials and get damaged during removal. Both hotend designs are not ideal, and I had issues with them during the tests, but I’ll get to that later.

Part Cooling

The Ender-3 Pro uses a small radial fan to cool the part, the Alfawise an axial fan with a nozzle that I slightly had to bend into place that the flow of air nicely reached the nozzle. They are not too loud, and even though it’s not a perfect cooling solution, prints do look really well, which I’ll show you in a second.

Electronics

One of the noticeable biggest differences between the two printers are their screens. The Ender-3 Pro uses one of the well known monochrome screens with an encoder wheel to navigate through the menus and adjust settings. The U30 Pro on the other hand features a really nice and responsive, full-color touchscreen that leaves almost no wish open. The only thing I was missing was babystepping to adjust the first layer height interactively. Both machines use an 8-bit control board that runs Marlin but not always in its newest release. Source codes and firmware updates are available on the manufacturers’ homepages though for the Alfawise I had to go the Longer3D website for the download. The main way in which the control boards differ are the stepper motor drivers. The Ender-3 Pro uses generic non-quite drivers that make the familiar sound during printing and are soldered directly to the board. If you want to make it quieter, there is a silent upgrade board available directly from Creality. The Alfawise shines in that regard and uses removable TMC2208 silent stepper motor driver for the X, Y, and Z-axis, which eliminates most printing noise if there wouldn’t be the cooling fan for the electronics but more on that in a bit. The extruder still uses a generic driver and can, therefore, be heard during for example retractions. The Gcode is loaded on both machines using the provided microSD cards. The Ender-3 has a slot in the front, the Alfawise, unfortunately, harder reachable, on its side. Both printers run on 24V, the Alfawise uses a generic, the Ender a name brand Meanwell power supply that is temperature-controlled. Wiring is definitely nicer done on the Ender, not only in the electronics box but also with flexible sleeves and a strain relief at the heated bed. The harder tubing of the Alfawise can be annoying from time to time, and a real no go is that there is no strain relief at the bed, so the pretty stiff wires are only held in place by the solder joints.

Color Touchscreen of the Alfawise U30 Pro

Smart Features

Speaking of silent stepper motor drivers, let’s talk a little about smart features. The only smart feature that the Ender-3 Pro has is power loss recovery, which means that if you lose power for a bit, the printer will resume the print at the layer it stopped before. The Alfawise U30 Pro does not only have power loss recovery, it also features a filament runout sensor that pauses the print when you run out of filament and allows you to change the material and resume the process. Even though both don’t have a bed leveling probe, at least the U30 Pro has a wizard integrated that helps to to quickly move the nozzle to the leveling locations. The Ender-3 Pro requires you to do that manually. Since the bed level is quite stable, I personally don’t miss a sensor here.

Print Quality

Now let’s take a look at one of the most important things for many and that is the print quality. Oh, and if you’re new to the channel and interested in 3D ptinting and engineering make sure to subscribe and select the notification bell! I used CURA 4.5 for slicing and loaded the default Ender-3 profile with some minor changes. Since the machines are so similar, I used the same G-Code always for both of them, which lets us compare the results quite nicely. All parts were printed in ESUN PLA+. The parts on the Ender used blue filament; for the Alfawise, I used red. As expected, print results are very similar and I mean that in a good way! Both machines were able to reproduce details of the test models very well. There are some minor differences in overhangs where the cooling solution of the Ender-3 Pro seems to perform better, and the U30 Pro sometimes shows blobs on the surface that is a result of too small print moves. I discussed a solution to that in a previous video that is linked below. There is no z-banding visible on either and these vases look stunning! Here and on some other smoothly curved surfaces is unfortunately where the Ender-3 Pro shows one of its weaknesses due to the use of the older stepper motor drivers. The parts show a salmon-skin effect which makes small steps on the surface visible. From time to time, there are some layer inconsistencies visible but, in my opinion, total acceptable at that price point, overall, the print quality is excellent besides small problems with blobs at the U30 and the salmon skin effect of the Ender-3. Dimensions were a little better at the U30 Pro, but that’s depending a lot on material and calibration, so I can’t say which one is really better.

Safety

Let’s quickly talk about safety. Even though they are kit printers, they don’t require you to wire mains or work near it. The Ender-3 Pro is still a bit nicer in that regard since the power supply is nicely enclosed, whereas if you take a look at the electronics of the U30 Pro, you come quite close to the connection terminals. I tested thermal runaway protection on both machines, and it was gladly activated.

Thermal runaway protection engaged on the Ender-3 Pro

Noise

Next let’s take a look, or better listen, how loud both machines are, sitting idle and during printing. The Ender-3 Pro is hardly noticeable when not printing. The power supply fan is temperature-controlled, and hotend, as well as the electronics cooling fan are pleasantly quiet with a level of 48dB. During printing, it’s a bit different because the stepper motors with the older drives are really annoying to listen to. During printing, we are around 58dB but we get quite a bit louder during fast travel moves with peaks of around 70dB. The Alfawise is a bit different in that regard because the electronics cooling far is already really loud and annoying at idle with around 56dB. If you start printing, it doesn’t get significantly louder with the quiet stepper motor drivers and the part cooling fan. The noise level is only increased from 56 to 58dB. So I would not like to have any of them next to me at my desk, but I’m a little sensitive in that regard, the Ender because of the annoying printing noise, the U30 Pro because of the horrible electronics cooling fan, though a swap of it might already make this a way more pleasant printer.

Community & Upgrades

So I’m not a huge fan of modding my printers to the point that I could have bought something better working in the first place. Still, this might be something very important for many. And in this regard, the Ender-3 is definitely better. Due to it’s popularity, it has a huge community, and there are by far more printable upgrades or even purchasable ones available. This goes as far as that there even is an upgrade to a coreXY available, that costs more than the printer itself. Since you often can’t expect the best support by many Chines printer manufacturers, a big community is also a big plus to help you out. The Alfawise U30 Pro or Longer LK4 Pro are not as popular and therefore don’t have such a big community and upgrades available. So if you’re totally new to 3D printing, the Ender might be a better choice due to the community support, though this doesn’t mean that you won’t get any for the Alfawise only not as much.

Long term experience

Printing a hand full of models is fun and shows us how nice the machines can print but usually doesn’t tell us how they fair a over more extended period. As I’ve said in the beginning, I’ve been using both of them for printing face shields, and though they worked quite reliably, there was one problem they both suffered from. I have been able to notice light wear or run-in of the rolls, which is easy to clean off, not bad, and totally common. Also bed level and part adhesion was very stable. The real problem I had with both was the hotend. It is a known problem of the Ender-3 that, over time, the Bowden tube, that reaches down to the nozzle can move slightly upwards, creating a gap between tube and nozzle and jamming it up. It first happened on the Ender-3, and just a day later, I had exactly the same issue with the Alfawise.I took the hotends apart, cleaned the nozzles, cut the ends of the Bowden tubes, and put everything in place again. The Alfawise has a totally stupid design here because the tube doesn’t reach all the way down to the nozzle but is stopped by a metal step in the heat break which creates two imperfections in the filament path. Here I just drilled the tube out so that the PTFE again reaches down to the nozzle. That worked for a couple of days of continuous printing, but then I had the same issue again. I’d either suggest getting better pneumatic couplers here or better, even hydraulic ones. What I will try out on both is Chuck Hellebuycks fix that decouples the feeding tube and the tube in the hotend. Otherwise, besides some wear at the extruder arm, both printers did really work well!

Summary & Conclusion

I said “both” quite a lot in this video. This is because the two printers are pretty similar in many aspects and do work equally reliable or unreliably. The Ender-3 Pro shines due to its removable bed, some higher quality components, and the huge community there is. The Alfawise definitely has more state of the art components, with the color touchscreen and Trinamic drives, but has a fixed bed some wiring issues and a smaller community. Would I advise you against buying any of these printers? No, I think both are capable machines, if you don’t expect the quality and reliably of higher-priced printers. Personally, I’d recommend the Ender-3 for bloody beginners, whereas the Alfawise U30 Pro more for people that find joy in a bit of tinkering and modification. If you want to get one of them, regularly check prices and availability because that can change a lot and might also be the reason to buy one or the other. A couple of links are in the description.

Buy the printers

*The following links are Affiliate Links where I earn a small commission if you buy products.

Ender-3 Pro
AMAZON: https://geni.us/ZmOa3
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Alfawise U30 Pro
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Longer LK4 Pro
AMAZON: https://geni.us/ACAqwp
Aliexpress: https://geni.us/dLEm

Ender-3 (Old version if PRO is not available):
AMAZON: https://geni.us/D4y4P
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Aliexpress: https://geni.us/LBOE6
Banggood: https://geni.us/Zb00M
Matterhackers(US): https://geni.us/hdPu
3DJake(EU): https://geni.us/SAnbBc7

Flexible Bed:
AMAZON: https://geni.us/BPEAuH
Aliexpress: https://geni.us/v1Op8U