The Ender was good when it worked, which it did really well for a year or two after I spent a lot of time and energy getting it sorted. But then things started to go downhill. In the hot end I had the heater cartridge, thermistor and cooling fan all fail separately but fairly close together. I had Z screw runout issues and had to replace the brass nut. The extruder housing cracked and had to be replaced with an aluminum one. Limit switches failed. V rollers failed. It suddenly developed adhesion issues with the glass bed and glue stick I’d been doing for years. Scuffing up the bed didn’t work, replacing it with a new glass bed didn’t work, scuffing the new glass bed didn’t work. I switched to a magnetic PEI bed, that worked but it conforms to the horrific banana shape of the Ender’s factory bed and I can only print on a single quadrant of it at a time because of the massive dips in between the screws.

This is just the stuff I remember from years ago. I enjoyed tinkering and upgrading the Ender in the early days but I’m older now and have other stresses on my time. I just want something that works.

Thanks for the advice everyone. I’ve been researching the suggested printers, though options are somewhat limited in my area and pricing varies to US retail. I’d hoped the Ender 3 price tier had approached a more turn-key experience by now, but it seems pretty hit or miss with the Ender 3 V3 SE as far as I could tell. It looks like out of what’s available the Qidi Q1 Pro gets me what I want and is the best bang for buck in local pricing.

Of course that’s a thing now. Yeah I would very much not like to be locked into a vendor ecosystem.