ZAR Value Guide: Print Speed, Auto Levelling and Direct Drive Ranked

Every 3D printer listing leads with the same three or four numbers, and almost none of them are ranked in the order that actually matters to your wallet. Spending priority on a first or second printer should follow what breaks a project outright versus what merely makes a good project a little faster, and those are not the same list the marketing puts first.

Quick Answer

Spend first on the extruder and the levelling system, since both decide whether you print successfully or spend the evening troubleshooting instead. Speed comes third, and appearance comes last. At R5,799 the Ender-3 V3 KE bundles all three practical priorities together, which is why it is worth judging on that combination rather than on the headline speed figure alone.

🥇 First: the extruder, because it decides what you can even attempt

Extruder type sets a hard ceiling on what materials will print reliably before speed or levelling ever enter the conversation. A direct drive extruder, feeding filament through only a few centimetres before the hotend, opens up flexible material and generally holds a steadier extrusion rate across the board, where a Bowden system pushing filament down a long tube trades that consistency for a lighter moving toolhead.

If a project might ever call for TPU or a wide material range beyond PLA, this is the specification worth getting right before any other. Getting it wrong does not make printing slower, it makes certain materials genuinely difficult to print at all regardless of how much time you spend tuning around the limitation. This is worth checking directly against listings in the 3D printer range rather than trusting a general product description.

🥈 Second: levelling, because it decides how often a print even starts cleanly

A first layer that fails ruins the whole print, no matter how fast or capable the rest of the machine is. Auto levelling, which maps the bed's actual surface instead of trusting a flat assumption, removes the single biggest source of failed first layers on a budget machine: a bed that is very slightly warped or a frame sitting a fraction out of true.

This matters more than speed for a simple reason: a fast printer failing 30 percent of its first layers has wasted more total time and filament than a slower one that succeeds consistently. Reliability compounds across every single print, where speed only helps the ones that were already going to succeed.

🥉 Third: speed, a genuine convenience rather than a floor requirement

Speed is where most of the marketing effort goes, and it is legitimately useful, shorter waits, faster iteration on a design that needs fixing, more throughput for anyone printing regularly, sometimes shaving a 3-hour job down to under 90 minutes on the right geometry. But speed only pays off once the first two priorities are already solid, since a fast printer with an unreliable first layer or the wrong extruder for your materials just fails faster than a slow one would.

Put differently, speed multiplies whatever reliability and material range you already have. It does not create either one, which is why it belongs third rather than first on a spending priority list, even though it is usually the first number anyone quotes when comparing a machine like the Ender-3 V3 KE against something such as an Elegoo model.

🎨 Last: appearance, because it changes nothing about what actually prints

RGB lighting, a coloured frame, or a particular industrial-design look are entirely legitimate reasons to prefer one printer over another once the practical priorities above are already satisfied, but they should be the tie-breaker, not the deciding factor. A better-looking printer with the wrong extruder for your materials or no auto levelling still fails the same first layers and still cannot feed the same filament reliably. A reachable local warranty deserves a similar rank to appearance in this order: worth having, rarely worth trading away a practical priority for.

Rank a shortlist by extruder type, then levelling system, then speed, and only compare appearance between machines that are already tied on the first three. Whatever machine you land on, pair it with consistent filament, since even a perfectly specced printer prints unreliably on a poor-quality or inconsistent-diameter spool.

It helps to think of each priority in terms of what getting it wrong actually costs, rather than as an abstract ranking. Getting the extruder wrong means certain materials never print reliably at all, a limitation no amount of tuning removes, so the cost is the full price of whatever project needed that material. Getting levelling wrong costs a fraction of a roll of filament and an evening's patience on every single failed first layer, which adds up fast across a year of regular use but is at least recoverable print by print. Getting speed wrong costs only time, and getting appearance wrong costs nothing functional at all.

Laid out that way, the ranking is really about how expensive a mistake is to live with, not about which spec sounds most impressive on a listing. A R5,799 printer that gets the first two priorities right and is merely average on the third and fourth is a better rand-for-rand purchase than one that leads with a flashy top speed while compromising on either extruder type or levelling reliability.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I ever prioritise speed over reliability?

Only if your printing is occasional and low-stakes, where an occasional failed print costs little. For anything with a deadline or a material cost that matters, reliability comes first.

Is direct drive worth paying more for if I only print PLA?

Less critical for PLA alone, but it still gives steadier extrusion generally and keeps the door open for flexible materials later without needing a different machine.

Does auto levelling replace mechanical assembly checks entirely?

No. It compensates for a slightly warped bed, not for a gantry that is genuinely racked out of square, which still needs checking during assembly.

How much should appearance factor into the decision?

As a tie-breaker between machines that are otherwise equal on extruder, levelling and speed, not as a leading factor on its own.

Is a cheaper printer with none of these features ever the right call?

Only for extremely occasional, low-stakes printing where reliability and material range genuinely do not matter. For anything more regular, the extruder and levelling priorities pay for themselves quickly in avoided failed prints.

How do I compare two printers that both claim to tick every box?

Look past the checklist to the actual numbers behind each claim, such as the extruder's feed path length or how many points the levelling probe actually samples, rather than trusting a feature name alone to mean the same thing on every machine.