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).
