Anycubic Kobra S1: A Strong Contender in High-Speed 3D Printing

Anycubic Kobra S1

The Anycubic Kobra S1 is one of the newest entrants in the high-speed CoreXY 3D printer market, offering fast printing speeds, automatic bed leveling, and an integrated AI-powered camera. While much of the attention has been on the Kobra S1 Combo, which includes the ACE Pro multi-material system, I purchased the standalone Kobra S1—without the ACE Pro—and will be providing insight into its real-world performance, build quality, and software ecosystem.

As this is my first 3D printer, and I am inexperienced in this space, I cannot provide a proper “Review”, so this is primarily my experience using this printer for over 100 print hours so far.

Pros & Cons

Pros:

• Affordable CoreXY printer with high-speed capabilities
• Easy assembly and quick setup (30 minutes from unboxing to first print)
• Solid build quality, minimal vibrations during prints
• Auto-bed leveling works reliably, reducing calibration hassle
• Good print quality out of the box, even at 200-300mm/s speeds (as reported by Orca)
• Textured PEI build plate works well with PLA and PETG
• Filament runout detection works well for smooth filament changes
• Aftermarket hardened steel nozzle available for abrasive filaments (Amazon link )
• Built in light works well enough to view the print through the mobile app

Cons:

• AI-powered Spaghetti Detection is too sensitive, leading to numerous false positives.
• Camera frequently stops working, requiring a printer reboot to restore remote functionality
• Software ecosystem is restrictive, at least for those of us that run Linux
• LAN control is not supported in Orca slicer, though promised for a future update
• Printer failed to detect a filament tangle, it just continued “printing” with no filament coming out
• 600mm/s advertised speed is difficult to achieve in real-world printing scenarios
• Low-resolution 480p camera, resulting in poor timelapse quality

Why I Chose the Anycubic Kobra S1

I did a bit of research and narrowed my options down to the Qidi Plus 4, Creality K2 Plus, and the Anycubic Kobra S1. I chose these printers as my requirements were:

• An enclosed CoreXY printer for better heat control and air filtration.
• A heated chamber and build plate for printing materials like ABS, ASA, and Carbon Fiber composites.
• A large enough print volume (250mm³ or greater) for prototyping a 3D-printed 10" server rack inspired by RackStack and Project Mini Rack .
• A Hardened Steel Nozzle for printing abrasive filaments. The AnyCubic does not come with this, but there is an aftermarket option on Amazon for when I need it, and the nozzle is easily swapped.

Originally, I was leaning toward the Qidi Plus 4, but reports of the extruder crashing into the bed during heated leveling were concerning, an issue unintentionally showcased in The Mountain Maker’s review video . The Creality K2 Plus was another strong option, but its significantly higher price pushed me toward the Anycubic Kobra S1, and in hindsight seems I got lucky as a lot of newer videos on the Creality are showing some initial growing pains. Around this same time, Elegoo released the Centauri Carbon, which also met my criteria, but it was backordered by 2-3 months. The Kobra S1 Combo with the ACE Pro was also on backorder, but the Kobra S1 standalone was available for immediate shipping—so got it while it was in stock.

I figure multi-filament on a single extruder right now seems like a bit of a gimmick, given that in many cases you’ll waste more filament than you actually use for the product when printing multiple colors. The one real benefit I see to this system is filament backup—if a spool runs out, the printer can switch to a backup spool of the same color without stopping, allowing for continuous printing. I would like to eventually get one of these systems for this feature alone.

Unboxing & Build Quality

The unboxing experience of the Kobra S1 was straightforward, with excellent packaging to prevent damage during shipping. Assembly was quick and easy, taking about 30 minutes from unboxing to my first print.

Build Quality & Design

• The frame feels solid, with minimal vibrations or flex during high-speed printing.
• The plastic front and top panels feel lightweight—some may consider them to feel cheap, but I like the design choice over glass due to safety concerns.
• The textured PEI build plate has worked flawlessly with both PLA and PETG. I’ve read a lot of concerns online about the difficulties of PETG adhering to the beds and have had no problems with the provided plate.

Initial Impression: The Kobra S1 feels like a well-built machine, but time will tell how well it holds up under extended use.

Print Performance

First Print: 15-Minute Benchy

The printer includes a 15-minute Benchy file preloaded on the system, and I decided to start with that using Anycubic Bright White PLA. To my surprise, the quality was excellent for such a fast print, the printer produced clean lines, good layer adhesion, and minimal artifacts. Looks like some stringing, and a little under-extrusion in some areas but overall good result in my unprofessional opinion. You can actually see on the bottom there is left over filament from the factory which I presume was their Quality Control testing the printer, as there was some red bleed on the white for the initial layer.

Benchy

General Print Quality

Over the next 100+ hours of printing, I mainly printed in PETG but did some fun stuff in PLA:

• Articulating Dragon —some minor stringing, but overall a great print.
• Cubi-Rack prototype parts in PETG—over 80 hours of non-stop printing with excellent results. Look forward to this announcement coming soon.
• Functional prints like a poop chute, bed scraper, and adjustable wrench—all printed accurately.

Despite my inexperience with 3D printing, I was able to get consistent results with minimal tweaking. Slowing down the Orca Slicer settings slightly improved print quality, but I have yet to achieve the advertised 600mm/s speeds for my own models. Most prints have been successful in the 200-300mm/s range, which is still fast compared to traditional FDM printers, at least from what I’ve read.

Prints

Issues in first 100 Hours

The AI-powered Spaghetti Detection is one of Anycubic’s advertised features. While it works, it’s overly sensitive—triggering false positives on nearly every print over the smallest amount of stringing, including minor imperfections that do not affect the final result. While erring on the side of caution is generally preferable, this often leads to unnecessary pauses. Worse, once the AI system is triggered and I choose to resume the print, it appears to stop monitoring altogether, leaving the rest of the print vulnerable to unnoticed failures. This flaw significantly limits its usefulness and needs improvement via firmware updates to refine detection sensitivity and allow continuous monitoring throughout the print process.

Additionally, I’ve had issues where the camera stops functioning in the AnyCubic App on Android. When selecting to view the camera, it simply brings up a Loading… screen that never loads the actual camera view. So far, the only way I’ve been able to get the camera back is by resetting the printer itself. This can lead to the inability to monitor the print remotely from the App until after a print is finished and I can reset it which has been very frustrating.

The Closed Ecosystem Debate

Keen readers may notice that I did not consider any Bambu Labs printers, even though they have some models that fit my criteria. Recently, Bambu Labs faced community backlash when a firmware update locked certain printer functionalities behind their Bambu Cloud service. While this controversy is seen by some as trivial, and others as a big deal, I personally am a fan of being able to use my devices locally without requiring the use of third party service providers, and this update from Bambu Labs really showcases to users like me the direction the company would like to go. My hope was to find a printer that integrated well with Orca Slicer (open source) and allowed LAN functionality and monitoring without cloud requirements.

Unfortunately, the Anycubic S1 is not (yet) that printer. The Anycubic Next slicer, which is based on Orca slicer, is currently the only way to fully integrate with the printer in LAN mode. However, there is only a Windows and Mac release, while I use Linux. The community has ported over the profiles from Next into Orca Slicer, but it cannot send prints over LAN, and the mobile app requires cloud access for remote monitoring. So, while LAN Mode exists on the printer, there is no Web UI that I could find, which means I cannot send remote print jobs at all. I could “sneakernet” a flash drive to the machine, but that is undesirable. I have heard that Anycubic promised that Orca Slicer LAN support is coming, but no firm timeline has been provided. For now, I do my slicing in Orca, upload to their cloud, and use the App to send the file to the printer–which is exactly the workflow I would like to avoid.

For users who value open-source control and local network printing, this remains a significant downside. However, I am not sure there is (yet) a suitable CoreXY option that is a “set it and forget” style printer that is fully open. Creality and Prusa appear to be the only options, both being significantly more expensive. All other open printers are bed-slingers that you have to build yourself.

Final Thoughts: Is the Anycubic Kobra S1 Worth It?

For $449, the Anycubic Kobra S1 is a strong contender in the CoreXY market with high-speed printing, solid build quality, and good out-of-the-box performance. However, its reliance on proprietary software, inconsistent smart features and my frequent camera issues hold it back from being an easy recommendation for people new to 3D printing. Hopefully the Centauri Carbon can ramp up production as it seems worth a look.

Do you own a Kobra S1? Let me know your experience in the comments!