Anycubic Kobra X review: 4-color 3D printing for an impossibly good price

Looking for a new hobby? It's time to give serious consideration to 3D printing. What was once a complicated, often frustrating, often expensive pastime is now easy, enjoyable and very affordable — at least if you choose the right printer.

I've owned at least half a dozen of them over the past few years, and the Anycubic Kobra X is by far my favorite. It's a breeze to set up and use, it supports four-color printing right out of the box and it's priced at just $299 (most of the time; see below for more information about pricing).

Yes, there's still a learning curve, and you'll have to contend with some wasted filament — an unfortunate byproduct of multi-color prints. But I'm having a ton of fun with this thing, and I think you will, too. Here's my Anycubic Kobra X review (followed by some frequently asked questions about 3D printing).

How much does the Anycubic Kobra X cost?

When I first started on this review a couple weeks ago, the Kobra X was priced at just $299 from both Anycubic and Amazon. A couple weeks in, the latter was selling it at $380 — but as of this writing, it's back down to $300. If that changes, you could very likely still get the lower price from Anycubic, but be sure to check company's shipping-estimate page , as delivery could take weeks.

In any case, it's definitely cheaper than the popular Bambu Labs A1 Combo Kit, currently $419 , and just an all-around great deal on such a capable printer.

Unboxing and setup: How long until your first print?

Most 3D printers require at least some assembly, and this one is no different. Thankfully, the steps are clearly illustrated in Anycubic's printed instruction guide, which also includes a QR code you can scan for a video tutorial.

This was one of the easiest builds I've ever done; it took about 30 minutes, followed by another 30 minutes or so while the printer performed some calibration and software steps. (Note: Don't be alarmed by a few moments of strong vibration, which makes it seem like an explosion is imminent but is a normal part of the calibration process. It'll often do this while printing, too.)

Just note that it's quite tall, standing about 27 inches with the upper-mounted spool holder. Plan your location accordingly.

The printer has a handful of 3D models preloaded, meaning before you even install the Anycubic app or desktop software, you can crank out a benchy (the traditional "first print"), a four-color dragon or the like.

Just to mix things up, I went with an articulated shark; it took about 20 minutes and came out perfectly .

That's the good news. The bad is that there's a learning curve to Anycubic's "slicer" software, which is where you import 3D models, assign colors and so on. And the instructions get you only as far as adding the printer; from there you're on your own. (If you're new to 3D printing or just this model, I highly recommend joining one or more related Facebook groups, where you can often find help from fellow users. I also recommend seeking out tutorial videos on YouTube.)

Single-color printing is straightforward enough: You import an STL or 3MF file, tweak any settings if needed, then "slice" it (meaning prepare it for printing). OK, but how do you determine which of the four available filament colors the printer should use? And if it's a multi-color print, how do you assign the colors to various elements?

It took me some time and experimentation to figure all this out — and that's 3D printing in a nutshell. But a lot of the previous aggravations — dialing in just the right bed and nozzle temperatures, getting good bed adhesion, adjusting the Z-axis offset, swapping out filaments — are greatly reduced here, if not outright eliminated. The Kobra X automates, or at least simplifies, many core aspects of the process.

Some of the credit for that goes to the high-resolution touchscreen interface, which is small (3.5 inches) but easy to navigate and as intuitive as they come.

A brief overview of Kobra X features

Without getting too deep into the spec weeds (trying to keep this novice-friendly), here are some of the more important Kobra X features:

• A 260 × 260 × 260mm heated, auto-leveling print bed with a flexible, magnetic plate

• Print speeds of up to 600mm/second

• Tool-free nozzle replacement

• A four-color automatic material system (AMS), though this machine can actually accommodate up to 19 colors (by way of Anycubic's AcePro 2 modules )

• Support for multi-material prints, meaning it can mix, say, PLA and TPU filaments in the same model

• RFID filament scanning (for Anycubic filament), which simplifies color and material identification

• Built-in camera for remote and AI monitoring (live camera feed, intelligent spaghetti-detection, etc.)

So let's talk about the four filaments. Traditionally, if you wanted to print something with more than one color, you had to stop mid-print and swap out the roll — a delicate and often unsuccessful process. The Kobra X handles this automatically, switching between the four colors as needed, with zero manual intervention required.

That significantly levels-up what you're able to create. If you're printing, say, a sign, the text can have a different color than the background. Figurines can have flesh-colored "skin" and vibrant costumes. A SpongeBob SquarePants can look like SpongeBob SquarePants — no painting required!

There's one downside to all this: AMS printing creates a not-insignificant amount of filament waste, as you're about to find out.

Printer "poop" and purge towers

As someone new to 4-color printing, I quickly learned about two aspects unique to this kind of setup: "poop" and purge towers.

Every time the Kobra X switches colors mid-print, it has to clear the nozzle of the current color to make room for the new one. It does this by moving to the edge of the print plate and extruding/ejecting a bit of filament. The result is a little curly-cue glob — and these "poops" can really start to pile up (which is why one of the first things you'll want to print is a wastebasket, one of the available built-in models).

Indeed, at the end of even a small print, you realize that 4-color printing involves a fair bit of filament waste. It's the nature of the beast, though at least the Kobra X generates less (about 50% less, according to Anycubic) than the aforementioned Bambu A1.

Meanwhile, the printer also creates a "purge tower," which further helps the transition between colors (and eliminates any bleed between old and new). It's wasteful as well, but, again, that's how these things roll. (You can disable the tower if you want and check the results for yourself, but there's no getting around the poop.)

What to do with all this waste? There are lots of recycling options; some crafty folks even buy silicone molds and melt extra filament into wildly colorful things like skull heads and lightswitch plates. This plastic definitely doesn't need to wind up in a landfill.

How well does the Kobra X print?

I printed over a dozen different models, from flat, four-color butterfly bookmarks to oversize cassette tapes for use as retro wall art. One of my favorites, which really only barely leveraged the color capabilities, was this Darth Vader bookend:

A few things I noticed right away:

• The bed and nozzle heat very quickly, usually in under a minute.

• This is one of the quietest 3D printers I've ever used. For sake of comparison, the last printer I reviewed, the now-discontinued AnkerMake M5 , made enough noise that I could hear it one flight up from the basement where it resided. Not so with the Kobra X.

• It's remarkably easy to load and unload filament; all it takes is a few taps of the control panel to make a change. There's a helpful audible cue when you've inserted the filament far enough. And if you use an Anycubic filament spool that has an RFID tag , it'll automatically recognize the color, material, etc. (Thankfully, it's easy enough to specify those things manually.) I found I could change a spool in just a few minutes, and most of that was just waiting for the automated unload and reload cycles to finish.

• The camera is angled in such a way that you can't easily see the first layers, and the integrated flashlight (which you can turn off) bounces off the base of the printer, degrading overall video quality.

Anycubic's app is easy to navigate, allowing you to check the status of the printer (and view a live camera feed) while also browsing Makeronline for items to print. Ultimately, though, you'll probably want to use the Anycubic Slicer Next software on your computer.

Because I had some experience with other slicing software, I knew the basics well enough — but, as noted above, anything to do with multi-color printing made me feel like a total novice. Even after a week of experimentation, I'm still confused about a few things.

When the cloud brings rain

I did encounter one troubling glitch during testing: One day the printer reported itself offline, even though it was still properly connected to my home Wi-Fi network. Turns out there was an issue with Anycubic's cloud server; I literally couldn't print anything until the outage was resolved, which took most of the day.

Along the way I learned of two workarounds: printing from a USB flash drive or switching the printer to local-LAN mode, which requires manually entering an IP address. They're not insurmountable obstacles, but they're not mentioned in the instructions anywhere and I suspect most users would be pretty stymied.

I reached out to Anycubic for comment about this, as I consider it a fairly major issue. A 3D printer shouldn't require an active cloud-server connection. A company representative declined to directly address this concern, instead pointing to the local-LAN workaround. Luckily, this happened only once, but I have concerns about the next time.

Should you buy the Anycubic Kobra X?

The Kobra X is a multi-color, multi-material printer that's equally well-suited to novices and experienced hobbyists. Nearly every aspect seems better than it should be given the price tag, from the attractive aluminum frame to the innovative 4-in-1 extruder to the quiet, speedy performance.

Having chugged along just fine with that AnkerMake M5 for the past couple years, I can suddenly see no future in which I'm not using a four-color printer. Yes, there's the waste issue to contend with, and I need more time to master the intricacies of color models. But the Kobra X has reignited my passion for 3D printing, and while it's not quite perfect, it's a seriously great buy.

FAQs about 3D printing

New to this hobby? Here are the answers to some commonly asked questions.

What is a 3D printer?

A 3D printer converts a spool of plastic string into physical objects. In this case, we're talking about a Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) printer, which builds those objects layer-by-layer by extruding melted thermoplastic filament through a heated nozzle. Think glue-gun, but with a lot more precision (and a less sticky result).

What can you make with a 3D printer?

Just about anything: toys, tools, figurines, phone stands, wall art and on and on. Sites like Makerworld and Thingiverse are home to thousands of designs, most of them free, and you can use 3D modeling/scanning tools to create your own objects to print. Heck, you can even tap AI to generate printer-ready models.

How long does it take to print a 3D model?

That depends mostly on the size, detail and number of colors. That flat butterfly bookmark shown above took only about 10 minutes. The Darth Vader bookend (just the stand part): about 3.5 hours. The latter is closer to the norm; this is a hobby that requires some patience, as it's not uncommon to wait several hours or even the better part of a day for a print to finish. But that's what the camera is for: You don't need to be standing over the printer the entire time.