Bambu Lab P1S Review

What this machine is for

The P1S is the enclosed member of Bambu Lab’s range and, at the time of writing, the least expensive way into a Bambu with a box around it. Its replacement, the P2S, is now the current model; the P1S is still listed new on Bambu Lab’s own US store, alongside factory refurbished units. Where each machine sits in the range is on our Bambu Lab lineup page.

Everything below is read from Bambu Lab’s own published specification table on 2026-09-06. We have not printed on this machine.

The specification, and what each figure means for you

256 × 256 × 256 mm. The same envelope as an A1, in a smaller footprint, because a CoreXY machine does not need room for the bed to travel. Bambu Lab adds a footnote worth reading: the default printable height in Bambu Studio is set to 250 mm to stop the nozzle colliding with anything left on the plate, and the last 6 mm needs a deliberate change.

All-metal hot end, 300 °C maximum; 100 °C plate. Both are the figures that make ABS and ASA printable rather than aspirational. The plate is the more important of the two — it is what keeps a tall part stuck down while its lower layers cool and try to contract.

Ideal: PLA, PETG, TPU, PVA, PET, ABS, ASA. Capable: PA, PC. Bambu Lab splits its material list into two tiers, which is more honest than a single “supported” column. Note what is not on either list: Bambu Lab states plainly that printing fiber-reinforced filaments such as glass or carbon fiber is not recommended on the P1S before an extruder and hot end upgrade is done. If carbon-filled filament is your reason for buying, this is not the machine.

500 mm/s and 20 m/s². That acceleration figure — 20,000 mm/s² in the units the rest of the industry uses — is twice what the bed-slinging A series publishes, and it is the practical benefit of CoreXY. It makes prints shorter. It does not make anything easier.

Activated carbon filter and a chamber regulator fan. Bambu Lab is specific about why: ABS and similar filaments emit odors during printing, and the filter is its answer. This, more than the material list, is what decides whether a printer can share a room with a person.

389 × 389 × 458 mm, 12.95 kg, 350 W at 110 V. Heavier than any open-frame machine we recommend and physically smaller than an A1 despite the same build volume. It wants a shelf, not a desk corner.

The camera is not a webcam

Bambu Lab publishes the chamber camera as 1280 × 720 at 0.5 frames per second, with timelapse supported. Half a frame per second is a still image every two seconds. It is genuinely useful for checking whether a print is still attached to the plate from another room, and it is not a live video feed. Buyers coming from the marketing photographs are sometimes surprised by that, so we are flagging it before you order.

Buying an outgoing model, and the refurbished option

Being the previous generation is not a defect, and it is worth being clear about what it does and does not mean. The P1S is a current, supported product that Bambu Lab still lists new; the P2S simply sits above it now. Spare parts, nozzles, build plates and the AMS are the same ecosystem, and the accumulated troubleshooting written by P1S owners over the past few years does not expire.

Bambu Lab also lists factory refurbished P1S units in its own store, at refurbished prices and, in its own words, with the same warranty as new. We cannot sell you one — the buy buttons on this site go to Amazon — and we would rather tell you it exists than pretend the only route is the one we earn on.

The genuine risk of buying an outgoing model is narrower than people fear: not support, but the possibility that the discount disappears when stock does. If the price is the reason you are choosing the P1S over the P2S, that reason has a shelf life.

What the AMS adds, and what it costs

The P1S takes Bambu Lab’s AMS, and the store lists both an AMS Combo and an AMS 2 Pro Combo alongside the bare machine. The AMS feeds four spools into the single nozzle in turn, cutting and swapping filament at every color change.

Two consequences follow from “single nozzle,” and they are the ones the marketing photographs do not show. Every color change purges the old filament into a waste block, so a multi-color model consumes materially more plastic than its finished weight. And every change takes time, so a model with frequent swaps can spend more of its run swapping than printing — a point we work through on how long a print takes.

Our position is the same as everywhere else on this site and does not depend on the brand: buy the printer, learn it in one color, add multi-color in month three if you still want it. It is one of the very few upgrades here that is genuinely deferrable at no penalty.

Living with it in a shared room

This is the second reason to buy a P1S and, in our experience of what people actually ask, an under-discussed one. Three published details bear on it.

The activated carbon filter, which Bambu Lab is explicit about: ABS and similar filaments emit odors while printing, and the filter is the answer to that. The chamber temperature regulator fan, which keeps the box at a stable temperature rather than simply hot. And the enclosure itself, which absorbs a share of the mechanical noise that an open frame broadcasts into the room.

What Bambu Lab does not publish is a decibel figure, so we cannot tell you how quiet it is in numbers, and we will not guess. What we can say is that an enclosure is the single largest structural difference between a printer that can run overnight near a bedroom and one that cannot.

What it costs to run

Bambu Lab publishes 350 W at 110 V as the maximum draw, which is the same figure as the open-frame A1 despite the enclosure — the heated plate dominates, and the box mostly retains heat rather than generating it. Maximum draw is reached while heating rather than sustained across a print, so treating it as constant overstates the cost.

Even overstated, it is small. We show the full arithmetic with its inputs, including the electricity rate we use and where it comes from, on what your first month actually costs. The short version: filament is the running cost of this hobby, and electricity is a rounding error.

Who should skip it

Anyone printing PLA. That is not a joke and it covers most first-year owners. Everything the P1S adds over an A1 — the box, the filter, the material tiers, the acceleration — is aimed at plastics and situations a first year does not reach, and none of it makes a PLA print better. Our A1 against P1S page walks the decision through with the numbers side by side.

Also skip it if fiber-filled filament is the plan, for the reason Bambu Lab itself gives above, and skip it if the budget is tight enough that the difference is real money. The cheapest good outcome in this hobby is a modest printer, a lot of filament and six months of practice.

What to buy with it

PLA for the first month regardless of why you bought it — the PLA picks are three mainstream spools. When you do move to PETG, the PETG page covers what changes. And if you are cross-shopping the enclosure itself, the Centauri Carbon comparison is the other way to spend this money.