3D Printing InfoPrinter comparison
Creality K1 SE vs Original Prusa i3 MK3S+
Compare hardware, build volume, printing specifications, dated prices and sources.
2 selected · all documented properties
Open these two in the interactive comparisonMore Creality K1 SE comparisonsMore Original Prusa i3 MK3S+ comparisons
| Property | Creality K1 SECOREXY | Original Prusa i3 MK3S+BEDSLINGER |
|---|---|---|
| Identity | ||
| Brand | Creality | Prusa Research |
| Class | COREXY | BEDSLINGER |
| Identity & Market | ||
| Manufacturer & exact marketed model name (verify the exact product identity first) | Creality K1 SE[1] | Original Prusa i3 MK3S+. The only version still listed in Aug 2026 is the "Original Prusa i3 MK3S+ 10th Anniversary Edition"[2] |
| Street price (USD; dated snapshot per entry) | Creality's K1-series comparison page lists $359 for the K1 SE (Aug 2026); it does not appear as its own product on the Creality US store printer sitemap, so no separate live store price could be recorded[1] | $1,199.00 assembled, $899.00 as a kit, for the 10th Anniversary Edition on prusa3d.com, Aug 2026. This is above the price the standard MK3S+ sold at, so do not read it as the MK3S+ street price[2] |
| Variants & sibling models — and how to tell them apart (spec-contamination risk) | The cheapest K1. It keeps the 220 mm cube volume, CoreXY frame and 600 mm/s claim but drops a lot: hotend body is PA+30%GF rather than all-metal, the build plate is epoxy rather than PEI, there is no air filter, no chamber heating entry at all in Creality's table, no foreign-object or failure detection, and the AI camera, remote monitoring and time-lapse are optional. Its filament list stops at Hyper PLA, PLA, PETG and TPU. It does get the steel-tipped nozzle integrated with the heatbreak and dynamically balanced fans, which the base K1 does not[1] | Only the 10th Anniversary Edition remains on sale; the standard MK3S+ is gone from Prusa's printer listing. Two official upgrade paths change the machine substantially and are frequently confused with it: MK3.5 (xBuddy board and new LCD, keeps the MK3 extruder) and MK3.9 (adds the Nextruder). A caution on Prusa's own pages: the "Awards & Press Reviews" paragraph about the MK3S is reproduced verbatim on the MINI+ product page, so award text found on a Prusa page does not necessarily belong to the printer on that page[2][3][4][5] |
| Market position: superseded? successor announced? | Not documented | Superseded by the MK4/MK4S line. Prusa cut MK3S+ prices at the MK4 launch in March 2023 and said it would keep selling the MK3S+ at a lower price and hold spare parts in stock[4][5] |
| Physical & Frame | ||
| Build volume X×Y×Z (mm) — advertised vs actually usable | 220 x 220 x 250 mm[1] | 25 x 21 x 21 cm = 250 x 210 x 210 mm (manufacturer figure)[2] |
| Machine footprint (mm) & clearance needed (cable/spool overhang) | 355 x 355 x 482 mm[1] | 500 x 550 x 400 mm (X x Y x Z), without the spool holder[2] |
| Net weight (kg) | Not documented | 7 kg (without spool)[2] |
| Frame construction & material | Not documented | Cut aluminium frame - Prusa's MK4 announcement contrasts "the cut aluminum frame we used so far" with the MK4's new die-cast frame[4] |
| Enclosure: open / enclosed; panel material; door/lid | Enclosed body, but Creality's comparison table leaves chamber heating blank for the K1 SE where the K1, K1C and K1 Max are listed as passive heating[1] | Open frame; the Original Prusa Enclosure is an optional separate product[4] |
| Kinematics & Motion Hardware | ||
| Kinematics (bedslinger i3 / CoreXY / other) | CoreXY (Creality's own K1-series comparison table)[1] | Cartesian i3 bed-slinger. Prusa's MK4 announcement notes the MK3S+ Y-axis profiles and heatbed were among the few parts carried into the MK4[4] |
| Stepper drivers (exact model e.g. TMC2209; UART/SPI; sensorless homing?) | Not documented | Trinamic 2130 drivers at 256 microstepping on the EINSY RAMBo 8-bit board, co-developed with UltiMachine; sensorless homing on X and Y[2] |
| Speed & Acceleration | ||
| Max print speed (claimed, mm/s) | 600 mm/s max printing speed (manufacturer claim). Creality's own footnote says the 600 mm/s figure was achieved in Creality Lab and that the typical speed is 300 mm/s[1][6] | Not documented |
| Recommended/typical print speed | 300 mm/s typical printing speed with 12000 mm/s2 typical acceleration, stated by Creality alongside the 600 mm/s headline[1] | Not documented |
| Max travel speed | Not documented | "200+ mm/s" max travel speed (manufacturer figure, no measurement basis given)[2] |
| Max acceleration (claimed, mm/s²) | 20000 mm/s2 max acceleration (manufacturer claim)[1] | Not documented |
| Extruder | ||
| Type (direct drive / bowden) & design name | Dual-gear direct-drive extruder[1] | Direct drive with Bondtech gears and an E3D V6 hotend[2] |
| Hotend & Nozzle | ||
| Hotend design (proprietary/standard; quick-swap mechanism?) | Hotend body in PA+30% glass fibre with a steel-tipped nozzle integrated with the heatbreak - not the all-metal assembly of the K1C[1] | Not documented |
| Max nozzle temp claimed AND firmware max temp limit (both values) | 300 C claimed max nozzle temperature[1] | 300 C claimed max nozzle temperature[2] |
| Heated Bed & Surface | ||
| Max bed temp claimed AND firmware limit | 100 C max heatbed temperature[1] | 120 C max heatbed temperature[2] |
| Bed surface (material, texture, coating), single/double-sided | Epoxy flexible build plate - different from the PEI plate on the K1C[1] | Removable magnetic spring-steel sheets in several finishes; heatbed with cold-corner compensation[2] |
| Leveling & Z-Offset | ||
| Auto bed leveling: probe technology (inductive / strain gauge / load cell / touch probe) | Not documented | SuperPINDA inductive probe (Prusa's temperature-drift-free replacement for the original PINDA), driving automatic mesh bed levelling and a self-test routine[2] |
| Filament Handling & Detection | ||
| Filament runout sensor (type, location) | Not documented | IR filament sensor built in, supporting filament auto-loading; the print pauses when filament runs out[2] |
| Cooling & Air Handling | ||
| Part-cooling fan(s): count, size, ducting design | Dynamically balanced closed-loop part-cooling fan and dynamically balanced PWM hotend fan; no air filter[1] | Not documented |
| Electronics & Power | ||
| Mainboard model & MCU (exact chip markings if teardowns exist) | Not documented | EINSY RAMBo 8-bit board, co-developed with UltiMachine[2] |
| Input voltage (110/220 V, switch or auto) | Not documented | Custom Delta PSU with hardware-based power panic[2] |
| Total rated power draw | 350 W rated power[1] | Power consumption 80 W on PLA settings, 120 W on ABS settings[2] |
| Firmware & Openness | ||
| Firmware base & current version (Klipper fork / Marlin fork / proprietary) | Open-source Creality OS, a Klipper derivative (CrealityOfficial/K1_Series_Klipper on GitHub, GPL-3.0)[7][8][1] | prusa3d/Prusa-Firmware on GitHub, GPL-3.0, whose README states it is "proudly based on Marlin 1.0.x" and covers the MK3S/MK3/MK2.5S/MK2.5 line; last pushed August 2025. Updated over USB from a PC[9] |
| Connectivity, UI & Camera | ||
| On-device UI capabilities (model preview, per-object controls, etc.) | Colour touch UI; remote monitoring and time-lapse are optional because they require the optional AI camera[1] | Not documented |
| WiFi (band/standard), Ethernet, USB ports, SD/flash-drive | Wi-Fi[1] | SD card (16 GB card included); Ethernet and Wi-Fi only via an optional Raspberry Pi[2] |
| Materials Support | ||
| Officially supported filament list | Hyper PLA, PLA, PETG, TPU only[1] | PLA, PETG, ASA, ABS, PC, CPE, PVA/BVOH, PVB, HIPS, PP, Flex, nGen, Nylon, carbon-filled, woodfill and other filled materials[2] |
| Safety | ||
| Thermal runaway protection (verify in firmware source if at all possible) | Not verified directly. Creality's published firmware for the K1 series (CrealityOfficial/K1_Series_Klipper, GPL-3.0) is described by Creality itself as a clone of upstream Klipper, and upstream Klipper ships the verify_heater thermal-runaway check; whether Creality's stock printer.cfg enables it, and with what thresholds, was not checked here[7][8] | Prusa shipped Thermal Model protection to the MK3 line as a firmware update shortly before the MK4 launch; the firmware is open-source and auditable[4][9] |
| Reliability, Support & Ecosystem | ||
| Warranty length & support reputation (evidence, not vibes) | Creality's US store states "Up to 12-Month Warranty", a 14-day return and refund window and "Lifetime Customer Support" on its printer product pages. The "up to" wording means the term is not uniform across parts[10] | 2-year warranty for consumers in the EU, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland; 1 year for EU enterprises and 1 year for the rest of the world, which includes the United States. A printer bought from a reseller or privately carries 1 year from the original delivery date and is handled by the reseller. Prusa advertises 24/7 chat and e-mail support in seven languages[11][12] |
Manufacturer claims, independent measurements, packages and test conditions retain their source wording. FDM linear speed and resin vertical speed use different units and are not directly comparable. Unknown values are marked “Not documented”. Prices and source dates remain historical snapshots; check the linked guide for product details. Differences highlight text, not a universal winner.
Sources for this comparison
- Creality - Compare K1 Flagship Series (K1 / K1C / K1 Max / K1 SE side-by-side spec table) creality.com · 2026-08 · vendor
- Original Prusa i3 MK3S+ 10th Anniversary Edition product page (Technical Parameters + Full Features List) prusa3d.com · 2026-08 · vendor
- Original Prusa MINI+ Semi-assembled 3D Printer product page (Technical Parameters + Full Features List, January 2025 Edition) prusa3d.com · 2026-08 · vendor
- Prusa blog - Original Prusa MK4 is here (published 29 March 2023), including the MK4 specification table and launch prices blog.prusa3d.com · 2026-08 · doc
- Prusa 3D printers category listing with live e-shop prices, Aug 2026 prusa3d.com · 2026-08 · vendor
- Creality K1C product page (full specification table) creality.com · 2026-08 · vendor
- GitHub API - CrealityOfficial/K1_Series_Klipper repository metadata ("clone from https://github.com/Klipper3d/klipper/", GPL-3.0, last push Dec 2025) api.github.com · 2026-08 · doc
- GitHub - CrealityOfficial organisation repositories (per-model firmware sources) github.com · 2026-08 · doc
- GitHub - prusa3d/Prusa-Firmware (MK3 line, GPL-3.0, based on Marlin 1.0.x) github.com · 2026-08 · doc
- Creality US store - K1 3D Printer product page (live price, warranty and returns banner) store.creality.com · 2026-08 · vendor
- Prusa Knowledge Base - Warranty help.prusa3d.com · 2026-08 · doc
- Original Prusa MK4S 3D Printer product page (Technical Parameters + CORE One+/MK4S/XL comparison table) prusa3d.com · 2026-08 · vendor