Saturn 3 & Ultra Vs Anycubic M5 & M5s - 4 Printers - 1 CLEAR WINNER

this isn't even a hard comparison I'm I'm sorry I'm genuinely sorry this will probably upset some people but I can only tell you the results of what I see in front of me when I see it and I'm not here to favor any particular brand or printer I'm just here to tell you what they do so you can make your own decisions if you've already purchased then you'll be pleased to know that none of these four options are bad printers but between the brands there are some rather significant differences it's my job to take you through them so hi I'm Ross and this is Pho Hammer videos right then we're comparing two Rangers here which actually equates to four printers so I need to be quite rapid to cover everything that's different don't worry about keeping up the beauty of YouTube is that you can easily replay moments if I go too fast so wearing the yellow jerseys are the any cubic M5 printers with the base M5 and the m5s the latter favoring speed and some AI enhancements too over its little brother then in the red and black stripe jerseys this Dennis the Menace combo is the Saturn 3 and the Saturn 3 Ultra yet again the latter favors speed but also has some significant and beneficial build benefits we'll come on too shortly and if this video leads you to pick a potential favorite I'd still recommend following up this video by looking at our comparison video of each against its partner and the individual review videos afterwards just to cement your choice and if you're watching this making up your mind because you still haven't bought yet if you're going to buy one of these off the back of one of our reviews or videos please consider clicking our affiliate links they're in the description we earn a commission at no cost EU but it also tells these brands that our videos are valuable to them they keep sending us more printers so we can do more reviews for you and remember I'm not here to tell you which printer I think is better I'm just here to help you decide which is the better printer for you let's not waste money yeah but speaking of money the current price of each unit in a sending order is the M5 is 419 currently discounted to 399 the Saturn 3 is 450 RRP also discounted to 399. the Saturn 3 Ultra is 550rp discounted to 499 and the m5s is 579 discounted down to 519. now when I say this Please be aware that these prices fluctuate throughout the year especially around launchers and sales periods such as Black Friday Christmas January Easter summer just to name a few but no matter what time of the year it is they're always listed at a discounted rate as though they were never really that price to begin with all of these printers are 12K printers in fact I'm convinced they all have the same screen manufacturer because the spec is identical across the board each 10.1 inch screen has a resolution of 11 520 by 5120 each printer also has a build area of 218 by 123 millimeters and if you simply divide the number of pixels by those millimeters on the same axis you'll know exactly how big each pixel is in this case they are 19 microns on the x-axis but 24 on the y-axis how big or small an individual pixel is is a much better measure of quality than just saying 12K is better than 8K because these are 12K printers but a printer like the Mars 4 ultra has 18 Micron pixels and is therefore capable of slightly better quality and yes we could use PPI or pixels per inch instead but people are constantly confusing that with DPI which is printer resolution 2D resolution so pixel size is the accepted term amongst 3D printer enthusiasts I didn't decide that I'm just trying to keep the trend going so that we can be clear about what we're talking about here but anyway comparing these 12K screens to the Mars 4's 9k screen would tell you that 12K is better than 9k right no because the screen on that printer is much smaller the pixels are smaller too and 18 Micron pixels are better than the 19 or well actually 24 microns on these printers so when you're comparing printers stop looking at 2K 4K 8K 9k 12K that isn't even really a thing and start comparing pixel size but then you need to watch some actual reviews before you buy because now there's even more to it than that and I'll showcase this shortly let's go through the printers right when it comes to unboxing eligue is a bit easier because you can just slide these upright out of the box onto your worktop though with any cubic you can just open up the top and bottom of the box and slide it out it's just a little bit more cumbersome so elegu wins in the unboxing regard woohoo okay looks and stuff the m5s are all identical with the main key difference on them being the addition of the S on the logo plate of the m5s that's it the Saturn printers are well you can see it here they're a bit sexier and they're more angled and they come in different colors to designate the model the ultra takes it one step further by having a metal chassis where all the other printers are plastic on the bases the elegus have lrf support where the any cubics only use LPL and because of this they slide everywhere in fact scratch that the ultra is the first 3D printer I've seen that actually has four lrl support beating all of the other printers combined obviously that's a minor thing but honestly it's fairly important the difference here is the Elegance printers will stay sturdy on most worktops whereas the any cubics will easily slide on smooth surfaces just from untightening the bolt on the bed though you could solve that by using a silicon mat I'm just saying with the elegus you don't need an extra thing to do a basic job when it comes to the external ports the any cubics and the base Saturn have their power socket on the rear and the USB socket on the right side near the back the ultra however I see is a bit of a downgrade in this department because it has all of the sockets on the right side with the power being near the back and the USB at the front this printer also has space here for a Wi-Fi antenna but I'll talk more about Wi-Fi shortly but personally as I've said many times I like clean sides on my printers so I can get other devices like washing cures up close power and Wi-Fi on the back USB on the front that's my preferred approach you may have a different View and that's fine but manufacturers keep these pieces together to cut down on circuit boards and cable costs inside the machines and it's just coming across as a little bit cheap right then that's the external stuff let's take a look inside them as I mentioned the screen size before that tells us the first two metrics of the print volume width and depth height is different for each model so I'll do it in ascending order both the M5 and the m5s are equal at 200 millimeters the Saturn 3 is 250 millimeters and the ultra is actually at 260 millimeters depending on what you print most often this extra height may not matter I print Miniatures mostly but at least with the Saturns I have it should I come to the point where I do need it rather than one day need it and not have it next up is stability all four printers have dual linear rails to prevent the bed from wobbling mid-print but the difference comes with the z-axis screw the m5s and the basic Saturn have a traditional lead screw where the ultra has a larger and thicker ball screw this is much more robust and promotes smoother less juddery motion significantly important when we're printing at fast speeds and they last much longer due to the ball bearings rather than a metal spiral against a metal thread the result is generally far less worry of layers shifting during prints the build plates however on the different models are the same for the printers from each brand any cubic uses a smooth sandblaster build surface and elegue has a laser-etched plate now I've had no adhesion issues from either and I'm not going to start recommending Flex plates I think they're a waste of money I've said it once and I'll say it a thousand times once the settings are dialed in it all works fine but the elegu style takes my personal preference just because the laser acting has historically shown me to be much better for plate adhesion but this is not so deeply engraved that prints are hard to remove in fact it's super easy and barely an inconvenience now before I move on to the leveling mechanism I want to drop down and look at the vat the M5 vat here is much deeper than elegus and this is where any cubic clearly takes the win with larger printers it's common that you want to print larger things so being able to just put more resin in the vat before starting a print is just a tad more helpful it's not a ton more but it's more so back up and we'll talk about the leveling mechanism first to talk about is the Saturn III this has elegu's traditional ball joint I've said in many videos that these are prone to coming loose more often than the mechanism we're about to talk about and whilst a few commenters will argue this is the case many more have agreed and the ultra kind of proves that point because the better mechanism is the four point screw system found on this printer you know considering this is the mechanism elegu decided to use on their premium printers the basic M5 has the same mechanism though I need to add that since my review I've actually continued using this printer and I've found that either the bolts or the thread seem kind of soft especially now that I've felt what the ultra feels like when tightening any of these mechanisms you want them to be as tight as possible but I can genuinely feel that if I were to add any more Force to the sockets on this printer I'll thread either the screw or the socket now the M5 however has no leveling mechanism the print actually has Auto leveling built in using some pressure sensors under the screen now when it comes to the leveling process for either of the elegus or the M5 you just loosen the screws send the bed to home then tighten the screws hold the bed down as you do this and for the ones with the four corner bolts tighten them in alternating Corners a quarter of a turn at a time don't do it fully tie all around the bolts in a circle or it may shift out of alignment as you tighten it if you do this right you'll only ever need to do it once and if this is your first time doing this before you move on make sure you tell the printer that this is the new zero position it's easy on the any qubit because it's on the same screen but on the elegus for some unintuitive reason you must back out of the menu and choose Z equals zero I've seen so many comments from people saying they can't get the base layers to stick and they've usually missed this step whilst we're looking at the UI though let's talk about how all the printers Operate Now the Saturn 3 easily has the poorest UI it works fine it's just a bit basic when compared to the other printers this UI is very outdated and is an insore need of a refresh next is the M5 and this has pretty much any cubic standard UI now but it's still a lot prettier than the Saturn my next favorite is the m5s and this is different to the M5 it's got a much more helpful UI by having a quick context relative quick access function down the left hand side but very easily and by far my favorite is the Saturn 3 Ultra which has a full HD UI that blends in seamlessly with the style of the printer everything in here is intuitively placed and it also allows you to edit print exposure and speed values direct from the printer now functionally they all do the job you need them to the main benefit I see is that all but the base satin 3 can raise and lower the bed in 50 millimeter increments and the ultra can edit settings on the Fly should you wish to reprint a failed model without fully re-slicing and the Saturn 3 Ultra has the best method of integrating a feature available on only three of these printers Wi-Fi both of the M5 printers have integrated Wi-Fi which on the outset is really clean because there's no visible antenna but getting Wi-Fi working on these machines is an absolute pain first of all you need to use their phone app just to connect to the printer's default Network and then you need to use the right app because there's also a wrong any cubic app then in that app enter your home Wi-Fi settings and then it's online but before you can connect to the printer's Network though you must press a refresh button on the Wi-Fi network screen on the printer on the m5s this wouldn't actually work until one time it just randomly did and then on the M5 despite the fact that I could refresh and see network credentials on the printer my phone never found it and to this day I've not got it working they may have done a firmware update to fix this but I haven't used the printer now for a while but it's regardless because all this allows you to do anyway is monitor the printer remotely by seeing a progress screen and getting notifications and yeah that's helpful to a degree and whilst you can still send some files to the printer you need to do this in the phone app and you need to do it from any cubic's own store of STL files the Saturn 3 Ultra has an external Wi-Fi antenna so it's not as clean looks wise but setup is easy you just use the on-screen UI and locate and connect to your home network when you slice a print in Chitto box you can choose Network send select your printer that the app has found on your network and it can send files to the internal memory and you can start them remotely too and thanks to that I've never actually used the janky USB drive that comes with most of these printers speaking of oh I am on fire with Segways today each printer comes with a box of goodies obviously the power supply but you get gloves Allen Keys plastic and metal scrapers along with masks and paper funnels once again though the elegus go above and beyond first of all the metal scrap is much better than what any cubic or really any other brand offers which is nice with a rubber handle and a sharp edge but with their printers you also get a carbon filter this does wonders at filtering out nasty smiles from resin and yeah they do work as for filtering out any vocs well my limited testing so far has shown me that they don't really do anything at all whilst both allergus have a socket for one of these the ultra goes a step further by allowing you to plug in two of these into your printer at the same time though you will need to purchase the additional one separately if you want to improve filtration further you can also connect these up to the new Mars mate which is a huge external carbon filter and again my early testing seems to show that it doesn't really do anything and by pumping the fumes into the air actually makes your environment worse but again it's limited testing wait for the review on that one I'm waiting to hear back from alagu before I release it and as mentioned all of these printers come with a cheap USB drive and I always recommend you replace these with a decent SanDisk one should you wish to use them with the ultra you don't ever actually need one just use Wi-Fi a quick word about slices before I get on to Quality the any cubics come with their own Photon Workshop which is a fine little slicer specifically for their brand and the printers work with third-party slicers too though I always recommend for the fewest issues always do your slicing in the app that comes with the printer they always get the latest updates in line with the latest firmware Changers by all means support your models in whatever you prefer and if you want a tutorial on easy supports you can watch my video and check out the link in the description below but just in case you are getting issues always always always always always default to slicing your models with the printer's native app always now elegoo they've really started pushing voxel dance tango and to use this you must use the code that you get with the printer and this gives you a lifetime license to elegoo's court a voxel dance version 2. the actual Tango is now on version four now whilst this slicer has some slightly better automatic Support options specifically if you're doing Miniatures I mean they're not great but they're okay I just don't like using it just moving models around the plate is so cumbersome so until they make that feature easier I'm not gonna go back but thankfully eligu also include chitu box on the USB drive with the printer too this is a tried and tested app and it works both natively and wirelessly if you have a wireless print option in Tango I can't find it and because I avoid using it I haven't even Googled to see if the options there but one thing to be aware of currently is when you save files for the Saturns I'd recommend you also stick to the dot CTB format because elegoo's own.gov format still has too many bugs like massive file sizes when you enable anti-aliasing so big even that sometimes they won't even fit on the tiny USB drive that you get with the printer and then as shown by snarky Arts anti-aliasing doesn't even work now when you're printing wirelessly chituvox will send the dot CTB format by default so there's no worry there and the final final thing before we get into print quality is the special unique features to some of these printers first up any cubic have an rarf feature for some reason no other brands have figured this out and any cubic have never actually evolved it or properly explained to people how it works but with this feature you can put any model in eight different octants along the build plate just imagine an invisible 4x2 grid on the plate just put models in the middle of each area and never cross the invisible lines so long as you slice this info on workshop and give it the same file name as the RAF file on the root of the drive you got with the printer it should work fine but when you print this each model will be exposed at a 0.25 seconds different to the last based on what your normal layer exposure time is when I print my exposure test I set the normal exposure time to one second so I can easily determine the different exposure times to find which one's best and if you want to see how to set up any printer easily no matter what it is or what resin you choose check out my video guide here and I'm yet to find the person who has followed this without success so the other call out feature comes again from the m5s not only does this have automatic bed leveling but the pressure sensors are also used to detect how much resins in the back before you print and it warns you to top up that's really useful and it can also sometimes detect if models have fully or partially fallen from the plate mid-print when it detects this it will pause the print and if you manage to get Wi-Fi working it'll send you a phone notification too much better than waiting in another room for the full print job to complete only to find out there were issues part way through I have had the occasional time where it's failed to detect a partial failure but it's never given me a false positive right then print quality thank you for sticking with me I know this is the part you wanted to know first of all let's quickly talk about some differences you need to know about for both Brands the premium printers are more focused on speed and by premium I mean the m5s and the Saturn 3 Ultra both of these printers have faster z-axis motors than their counterparts and both use the newer Frosty ACF film rather than clear PFA film that we've all gotten used to over the last couple of years and whilst the main benefit of ACF is that resin can be pulled away 30 easier allowing faster lift speeds the Frosted nature will diffuse the print sharpness too to varying degrees but stick with me now print speed's still odd because the Boost you get depends on what resin you use just like with fdm printers it depends on what type of filament you use so let's say you've got resin X and once you've dialed in your exposure time you may want to speed up your printing time so you've tested it on a printer using nfat PFA film and you've slowly increase the speed of your printer to determine the point where layers start to peel and then step back a degree to get your best lift speed for that resin ACF will let you lift 30 faster than that so for Hardy detailed and thick resins like Frozen's 8K resin which is super sharp you go from 60 millimeters a minute to something like 80 millimeters a minute that's not that amazing you can go faster but you need to over expose your prints to do it and you're going to lose detail whereas for more viscous and Hardy resins you would have a faster print speed anyway so let's say it's 180 millimeters a minute now it's nearer to 240 millimeters a minute but the thing is it's the resin and not the printer that determines the fastest print speed assuming you want to maintain some level of quality anyway for engineering prints and prototypes yeah do what you want yeah the benefit's still there but if you actually want a final high quality completed model you don't want speed but remember the bigger the things are that you print the less visible that slight detail loss is going to be anyway so if you don't care too much and just want fast prints then weighed in with either of the premiums they are both super fast with the m5s advertising 105 millimeters an hour and the Saturn Ultra advertising 150 millimeters an hour but to do this you need special high-speed resins and really thick layers oh and by the way both of those Brands advertise those speeds but don't tell you what layer height they printed out in order to achieve them they also don't tell you what resin they used and they also don't tell you what their exposure times were all in all just take those speeds with a pinch of salt they're both fast that's it they're both fast now while some people are okay with this quality loss for Speed it is a rare few and even for those it's in rare circumstances now look when it comes to Quality I'm getting Vibes of Robin Hood Men in Tights where I'm having to tell you bad news in a good way somehow so instead I'm just gonna State the worst the best and if you do want more detailed validation again go and watch my individual videos please links are in the description and I'll pop up each in the corner as I talk about them here so very easily in last place for quality is the m5s as shown by the exposure test plate you can see that quite a few of the gaps at the bottom are closed and this is with a balanced exposure too as we can see from an equal number of holes and posts shown on the left side now this is mostly due to the ACF film which blurs all the edges of Prints but there is more well technically less at play here that reduces the quality of these prints further so the M5 is up next and this is certainly better than the m5s because we no longer have the diffusing ACF film but the issue here is that it's still well it's it's just not a good print despite once again having a balanced exposure I can actually compare this to last generation's 8K printers of equivalent sizes for example any cubics own M3 premium and these are clearly worse prints showing more gaps on the bottom section and fewer raised lines now whilst I said in my m5s versus M5 comparison video that any cubic responded and said that this is due to some internal Hardware level anti-aliasing honestly this is more likely due to the light source and lack of refracting lenses which would help direct UV rays towards the build plate rather than outward causing the bloat that we see here and by the way for those tests I used Frozen's 8K resin which is incredibly sharp yes I keep saying it's quite brittle the point is that with this resin alone we should get sharper prints and what I'm about to show you don't now by the time I did the reviews for The elegue Printers I'd started using my own wargamer resin which well this resin is still sharp but we put more balance into the durability properties of this resin in order to make usable pieces models printed with this are much more like store-bought Plastics than anything I've used before including most ABS light resins which are yeah they're durable but kind of soft soft on details I mean but look I'm not out here trying to promise you the world like some snake or salesman whilst this is close it's not as sharp as Frozen's 8K resin but as I said that's so brittle that Miniatures specifically can just fall apart by picking them up now the next best quality printer is the Saturn Ultra but the difference between the two is minimal again watch that video for the full validation but this printer was the first time I truly saw the benefit of ACF because unlike all of the other times I've used it this wasn't significantly overblown it was very slight and on top of that unlike the crosshatch texture I've gotten from other ACF films this leaves no more than a slightly matte surface well because I've had three bad times and one good experience with ACF I am still nervous that I somehow just got lucky with a decent sheet in this printer or ellagua using some different special brand that they don't even use on the Mars 4 ultra this proves the case for ACF whatever it is and finally in terms of print quality is the base Saturn 3. the lack of ACF here makes a difference to sharpness of prints in fact these are the sharpest prints I've ever seen on an LCD printer ever and that includes printers with smaller pixels now the Saturn 3 has a let me get this right Fresno funeral fronel thrownel thru now thrill whatever you know what it means a thrunal lens frenol yeah that lens anyway and it has one of those lenses just like the Saturn 2 before it and this is designed to direct UV light in more of a straight line so each layer is sharper ideally like a DLP printer and in the case of this it works an absolute tree now finally before we summarize and this is a bit you may want to re-watch because it's difficult enough to say if you want to know if these premium ACF printers are capable of the same detail as their brand counterparts if you use PFA film yes they are and I have comparison videos for each brand of print answers to prove it the point is if you want all the features of those premium printers like the M5 Auto leveling and failure detection or the Ultras well not that but everything else that makes it awesome you can still get these benefits and the quality of PFA film if you just replace the ACF or better so you have all options grab an extra vat and stick some PFA film on that then you can choose between fast and detailed whenever you need it so that's it I hope you can see now what I said in the intro this is kind of an easy pick and remember don't shoot the messenger I'm just testing them and showing you the results now assuming when you watch this video if the price difference between these models is around the same as what it is when I recorded the yellow Goose just outpace the any cubics in almost every regard including price let's break it down they offer a higher print quality output along with potentially faster print speeds and a larger volume printing area but beyond that you also get the resin carbon filters and in the case of the ultra Wi-Fi that consistently works and it's much more useful to you as a function and in my opinion you've got much better build quality too thanks to elegu's slight refinement of what has come before rather than yet another reinvention of the Wheel from any cubic even the little rubber legs and feet are a much welcome addition over any cubics plastic legs that have no grip whatsoever honestly if they can't even get grip on the feet right it kind of Screams out loud just how cheap any cubic have made these things in this generation but they do have a couple of things in their corner they do have deeper Vats and the any cubic m5s has an auto leveling feature and failure detection and I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel here but I kind of feel like I need to M5 is a higher number than Saturn three it's got that so yeah as I said in the intro look I'm not here to promote any particular printer over the other but it really boils down to those features I just mentioned and if any cubics that and or leveling system outweigh what you get from the equivalent elegus grab them if it's the right one for you but personally at this point what I think we could do with seeing is an M5 premium from any cubic like the M3 premium of the last generation something with much better build quality than we've got here a sturdier ball screw and something to make the UV light significantly sharper than it is because right now and I'm sorry to say it but the facts of which has the best value it's all looking like it's sitting in alagu's corner so that's it guys if this video helped you decide in a printer then drop me a like below and a comment to feed the algorithm it will really help if you would click our affiliate links before purchasing again no cost to you but it's how I keep the lights on and feed my family I want to say thanks for watching and a huge thanks to our channel members who got this video along with all of our content on early release along with other exclusive videos so until next time so long farewell auf wiedersehen good night faux hammer out foreign [Music]

Channel: FauxHammer

Views: 131,292

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Id: bNFBmflkimo

Length: 28min 24sec (1704 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 19 2023