Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Caution before you buy. When I was researching 3d printers for my daughter for Christmas, the XYZprinting da Vinci mini looked like the perfect entry-level printer. It's still workable, but I have some buyers remorse. First and foremost, what you will not uncover easily is this printer contains Data Rights Management (DRM) protection on its filament. This is what that means: When you purchase this printer it comes with a spool of starter filament. That spool has a chip in it and that chip counts how much filament is left on the spool. Seems harmless, but once that chip registers empty, it cannot be reset. If you use filament from another company, such as Hatchbox, the printer usage counts against that chip. Once it reaches zero, it doesn't matter how much filament you have, you no longer can print until you order another spool from XYZprinting. It's similar to the shave razor business model; sell the razor cheap but charge enormous prices for the razor blades. That means you cannot buy third-party filament for roughly $20.00 a spool, you must instead purchase new filament directly from XYZprinting and pay their prices. So ignore all those 'also purchased with this product' advertisements. I now have three nearly full spools of filament that cannot be used because my chip says I need to buy more. Infuriating. There are some other issues I have with the printer. The instruction manual is poor, it's a stapled together printout with poor quality images. The detail on the print quality is average to low. The software must be downloaded and does not come with the machine, and once installed is not very user friendly. I've only successfully printed 3-4 projects out of about a dozen due to a variety of failures. The most common issue and an important item to note if you purchase this printer, you'll need to use a glue stick to coat the stage. If you do not do this, your project will move part way through your print and that ruins the entire project because of how precise the print needs to be. On the flip side, I'm learning a lot about 3d printing. I'll probably get something more professional at a later date because this machine isn't very good for serious printing. I may try to sell it and upgrade.