Creality Ender 2 3D Printer Kit Review

Update, 2026. This printer is no longer on sale, and the shop links below died along with Gearbest. I have left the review up because the build notes and the general lessons still apply, but do not go hunting for one of these.

What I recommend now for FDM 3D printing: Anycubic. Here is my Kobra S1 Combo review, and my tools page has the rest of what I actually use.

Creality and the CR-10 reviews were everywhere in 2017. Only Prusa got better press from what I could see. Justifiably, I might add. The Creality Ender 2 kit is a cut-down CR-10. Literally, it is like half a printer. Does it perform half as well? Let’s see …

Half a printer?

The Ender 2 is like you have taken a regular 300mm x 300mm CR-10 and sliced it down the middle, taking the whole right side of the printer away.

Weird thing? It works, and it works well!

Creality Ender 2 Specs

Let’s start with the price because outside of everything else, this is the reason why this kit gets attention.

~$200 USD at Gearbest.

+ GET $30 OFF WITH THE CODE GBTE AT CHECKOUT

What do you get for that?

150 x 150mm heated build plate with 200mm Z-height
Open 1.75mm filament, mk10 bowden hotend and extruder combo (0.4mm nozzle supplied)
Print USB or SD card
12V PSU
LCD screen and control box
Metal construction

See? Exactly as you would expect from a cut-down CR-10.

It is a little more involved to put together than a CR-10, but it is not as involved as, say, the Anet A8 or similar, and the major parts are metal so it is a bit more forgiving for clumsy folks like me.

How does it print?

It prints very well, like it’s bigger brothers and sisters basically.

Any problems?

You will want to get the community supplied slicer profiles (Chris Bennet has a good one but I can no longer find it).
Creality are not honoring the spirit or the law with the open source Marlin firmware that they supply with the printer, they should make their customizations open.
The belts have some severe rubbing so I need to go back and do some tweaking.

Bottom Line

This is an excellent printer at a great price.

You can get it right now at Gearbest (who sent me mine) for the best price.

+ GET $30 OFF WITH THE CODE GBTE AT CHECKOUT Buy it as a first printer, a portable/travel printer, use it for smaller prints such as action figures, robot parts, props, or this would be an excellent printer to teach. Would I buy this over the Anet A8 at a similar price? Yes, if you don’t need the extra capacity that the 200mm bed of the A8 provides. I would say the A8 has more community modifications and upgrades available for now also. If a 150mm bed is fine then I would go for it. My first printers were 150mm (Makibox, Printrbot, Cube3) and they served me pretty well until I wanted to build an Astromech (which I still haven’t done, by the way).