VoxelMatters Review: Meet the X2D, Bambu Lab’s newest workhorse
Printing tough multi-materials as easily as PLA, without moving from your desktop, at an incredible price point
The first impression you get of a Bambu Lab X2D is that it’s a bit small. The first Bambu Lab 3D printer I ever reviewed was an H2S, so I admittedly have been a bit spoiled. But size isn’t everything, right? My second Bambu Lab printer, the H2C, is the company’s most advanced model to date, and the only improvement I could point out in my review of it was that, for certain production applications, especially in a 3D printer farm environment, the H2C overdoes it. Its complexity is well-suited to large multicolor and multimaterial prints, but it can be a challenge for serial single- or dual-material jobs. The X2D has been made to address that specific criticality. It’s simpler but incredibly capable, and, most importantly, it is very reliable print after print. Not just with PLA and PETG but with pretty much any material from Bambu Lab, from ABS, ASA, and PC to TPU and glass- or carbon-fiber-filled nylon.
The best thing about the X2D—its price-to-quality ratio—means that, at just €629, it’s not only a viable production component for a 3D printer farm but also a fantastic option for consumers. Bambu Lab designed the machine with a dual-nozzle system that keeps part printing separate from support printing so supports on steep overhangs and in internal channels can peel away cleanly. Other features include AI monitoring, active heating, dual-intake cooling, and adaptive calibration. The integrated three-stage filtration system is definitely a welcome and needed addition, making the printer suitable for a living room rather than just a workshop, given the many different materials it can print proficiently. Paired with Bambu Studio’s tuned material profiles and the 400,000+ design library on MakerWorld, the X2D positions itself as a machine that goes from file to finished part with minimal setup, at a price that undercuts Bambu’s own H2D by more than half. Size, in this case, is the only limitation. But let’s see what it can do.
This is what Bambu Lab sent us:
- X2D AMS Combo: €849
- Includes:
- AMS for Multi-color 3D Printing
- (the stand-alone 3D printer costs €629)
- Includes:
- AMS HT: €129
- Filament Track Switch: €51
- TPU Feed Assist Module: €46
- 13 spools of filament: circa €???
- Including:
- 5 PLA (circa €125)
- 2 TPU (circa €90)
- 1 TPU for AMS (€36)
- 2 ABS (€25)
- 1 PA GF (blue) (€63)
- 1 Support PVA (€42)
- Including:
- Total value: circa €1,271
Super quick setup
The X2D, like all Bambu Lab 3D printers, comes packaged in multiple layers to ensure it’s delivered in perfect condition. And it is. Removing all the tapes and screws takes some time, but it’s a good tradeoff. Every step is straightforward and intuitive. Anyone can do it, but it’s better to follow the video instructions to make sure all the screws are removed properly. The AMS can be connected, as with any other Bambu Lab printer, by plugging in the power and data cables and by inserting the PTFE tubes.
The only additional step is the filtration system, which requires a couple of screws to connect to the back of the machine and a power connection. The external spool holder, also connected with two screws, completes the setup. The X2D has a dual extruder, so both the external spool and the AMS can be connected simultaneously. Completing the installation via the touchscreen is straightforward, as the software guides you through every step and the machine performs all calibrations automatically.
The printing setup starts with installing the AMS 2 Pro and external spool holder, then loading filament either through the AMS 2 Pro—where the system auto-detects and assigns the connected hotend—or through the external spool, using the touchscreen to set filament type and color before pushing filament through the PTFE tube until it extrudes cleanly.
Printing can be launched from the touchscreen, Bambu Studio, or Bambu Handy, with steps covering model selection, plate and nozzle confirmation, and filament matching per hotend; a USB drive is recommended for storing timelapse footage and print history. All the Bambu Lab software continues to improve, making it the one of the most accessible and clear slicers on the market today. While we are not going to get into the dispute between Prusa and Bambu Lab over the use of the slicer’s open-source licenses, the only issue we experienced was that the Mac version often freezes and needs to be restarted.
When the going gets tough…
Let’s get straight to the point. The X2D’s main strength is that it makes repeatedly printing with tough materials like ABS, polycarbonate and nylon composites as easy as printing with PLA and PETG. This is not something to be taken lightly. All desktop 3D printers priced above $500 can now repeatedly print PLA and PETG with almost no issues. With the Snapmaker U1, we’ve noticed that a sub-$1000 3D printer can also make multi-color printing extremely reliable and repeatable (and remarkably quick). The X2D leverages the H2D’s (and H2S’s) experience to make printing with higher-end materials—even in multi-color—more reliable than ever at this price point.
Even ABS, a very common 3D printing material, requires temperatures that can cause problems for the extruder or the print itself during long prints, while nylon composites remain difficult to extrude and deposit properly and precisely. Professional-level systems can print these materials without issues, but you have to plan for an investment of at least $3,000. Here we are talking about a machine that costs less than $700, and, in our experience, it has achieved a level of reliability we’ve never seen before.
This is due to several advanced features integrated into the X2D. One is Filament Path Monitoring, which uses sensors to track feeding status, detect tangle risk, measure filament usage, and keep every tool in place, ensuring every move is under control during long printing times. Another is the ultra-accurate temperature-control capability: ten temperature sensors span the nozzle, heatbed, and chamber. Paired with airflow sensors, they keep heat steady throughout the entire print. The first layer is always perfect, no matter what material you use (even on a standard plate). After a few prints, we started using glue to ensure adhesion, but it might not have been necessary.
Because this machine is ideal for printing tough, often more toxic, materials, the integrated filtration system is essential: the X2D has a three-stage filtration system with a G3 pre-filter, an H12 HEPA filter, and a coconut-shell-activated carbon layer that work together to reduce odors and airborne particles. This is the same level of filtration used in H Series printers.
Supporting dual extrusion
The defining characteristic of the X2D is its dual-extrusion system, similar to that of the H2D. It’s built so you don’t have to sacrifice much of the (already limited) build tray space, but it does require some additional manual intervention to install, remove, and move the nozzles to optimize your print. Nothing insurmountable; in most cases, you won’t have to touch them at all. However, the dual-extrusion system is not like the H2C’s Vortek system, which means that on prints with more than two different colors, the machine will have to purge the material on color changes, resulting in much longer printing times and much more filament waste. For up to four colors using PLA or PETG, the Snapmaker U1 remains our system of choice, while for several colors, the H2C’s Vortek remains the best and most reliable solution we’ve tried so far.
That’s why the second extruder is intended mostly for supports, both PLA and water-soluble PVA, on complex prints using tougher-to-print materials, including TPU. Using the second extruder makes supported prints much faster. The way it’s set up reduces the risk of contaminating the primary material, opening up many more options. For example, pairing TPU with PLA in a single print lets a single object combine flex and rigidity, such as a hanging planter that sways instead of snapping, a bag with working zippers, or an action figure with joints that actually articulate.
Bambu Lab also points out that the setup allows for faster, cleaner color switching: the nozzles swap in a split second, and Bambu Studio manages the color split to cut filament waste and produce sharper transitions between colors; however, other systems can do even better on colors. On the mechanical side, the toolhead’s gear-and-trigger mechanism—a lever-driven gear train instead of a motor-driven nozzle changer—makes it the lightest dual-nozzle system among all Bambu Lab printers, which reduces toolhead weight, inertia, and vibration enough to keep surfaces consistent even at full print speed. These are Bambu Lab’s own claims; I haven’t independently verified the weight figures. However, the feeling is that this machine is really fast and reliable, even on long-supported prints.
To make things easier, Bambu Lab sent us the Filament Track Switch, which is sold separately for the X2D and priced at €50.99. The module sits between the AMS units and the toolhead’s dual nozzles and basically removes the need to manually swap spools between AMS units to get a given filament to the correct nozzle. This feature is nice because you generally don’t want to print the primary material through the auxiliary extruder (and vice versa, the support material through the primary extruder), but without the filament switch you might have to move the tough material from the AMS HT to the AMS Pro, which you might not want to use as a filament drying system since you probably have different materials in it. The Filament Track Switch takes care of that, routing any filament from any connected AMS to whichever nozzle the slicer assigns (no need to select “Convenience Mode”) and supporting mid-print color reassignment rather than a fixed AMS-to-nozzle pairing. Installing the Filament Track Switch is actually a lot of fun, since you have to print several components to hold it and the AMSs in place (which helps keep the price down).
From MakerWorld to Nylon GF
So what did we use this powerful tool for? As with all our previous machine reviews, our main challenge is finding objects to print that can demonstrate the system’s capabilities. Here, MakerWorld (along with AI modeling engines like Tripo, Hi3D, and Meshy) is the key factor. MakerWorld, MakerLab, and the hundreds of thousands of qualified designs available through them are Bambu Lab’s main strength, and that applies to the X2D like it does to every other Bambu Lab (and even non-Bambu Lab) 3D printer. There are so many great designs that we’d love to try them all, but we also have to weigh the time required to print multiple parts against the other commitments involved in running VoxelMatters. So please bear with us if we keep it relatively simple.
PC
We felt confident enough with this machine right away that, for the very first print, we used a translucent PC material. The material itself has an engaging story. We received a couple of spools from our friends at Tillverka, whom we supported on a project to present the X2D during Milan Design Week. They used the new X2D 3D printer to create a set of chairs designed by Pietro Bonu and Giuseppe Donvito of Tillverka. The chairs were conceived specifically for the space, offering visitors seating within Aura’s immersive air-purification capsule while demonstrating what desktop-scale 3D printing can produce at a functional, exhibition-grade level. The Aura installation itself, part of the Isola Design Festival’s Urban Collective program, centered on the startup’s plant-based air filtration systems and marked the launch of Sphera Mini, its first consumer product.
To test this material, we chose a foldable hook that required both strength and adequate dimensional stability, and the system passed with ease. We printed several other parts using PC, including a large spool holder, and they all came out fine.
ABS
Next, we moved to ABS. I personally don’t love this material, to put it mildly, because its fumes give me a migraine immediately. However, the machine’s filter held up well, and we printed several parts. One of these was a fairly large and complex part: Mongo, the dinosaur from the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, and it was printed without any particular issues, apart from that we had to resize it a little to fit within the build volume. The ABS printed so well that we tested on a multi-material part using two different ABS colors.
This was the first time we printed in multiple colors using a material other than PLA or PETG. We used the materials to produce a foldable cube fidget toy. Once again, these types of parts require adequate dimensional stability to fold and unfold properly, and it worked just fine (photo on the right in the photogallery above). At the time of writing, we are also using ABS to print the TPU Feed Assist module casing and bracket (more on this topic in the next update).
PLA
In another experiment, we used translucent PLA, a relatively challenging material to print because it never sticks very well to the plate, to print several large components for a massive modular filament spool rack. We’ve been regularly adding new modules to it, using leftover filaments, and it’s now enormous. It has room for over 60 filament spools.
What’s interesting about the modules for this project is that they’re fairly large, and we need a lot of them, so we tend to fill the entire build volume, especially in the X2D. To test the machine’s capabilities, we printed the components both with and without supports. Even with a 90° overhang at the bottom, for a bridge of about 3 centimeters, the components came out perfectly level without supports.
The only notable failed print we had (in over 300 hours of printing with several different materials) was a complex multicolor robotic shark action figure, another character from the Dungeon Crawler Carl universe (this series keeps delivering great 3D-printable figures on MakerWorld). The print failed on the thin robotic legs, which broke apart after we removed the piece from the plate. You might say that sharks are not supposed to have legs anyway, but take it up with the author. Several factors likely contributed to the failure, and they’re not necessarily due to a fault in the machine’s mechanics. The part was particularly thin, and the failure coincided with a layer where the extruder changed color. I should note that I manually colored the print in the Bambu Studio slicer app, and the color changes may not have been clearly defined. When we reprinted the figure in a single color, it came out without any problems.
For another PLA print, we used a generic beige filament to print a vase with an intricate exterior pattern. We printed it with standard settings, at 200-micron layers. While the vase wasn’t a particularly challenging print, the end quality was really good (partly thanks to the filament quality as well), with barely visible layer lines and no defects. To be fair, I should mention that these PLA vase prints come out almost perfectly on just about any printer.
PETG
For a PETG project, we printed a large toolbox for all our Bambu Lab accessories. Each drawer of the toolbox filled the tray almost completely, and adhesion was excellent throughout. The top level was printed in two colors, with the lettering in black PETG. The interior separators were all printed using Bambu Lab’s green PLA. In general, all PETG parts printed perfectly, which isn’t a surprise, since PETG is one of the easiest materials to print and Bambu Lab’s PETG and PETG HF are very high-quality. The entire object required us to fill the print tray 7 times, for a few dozen hours of printing in total. But we didn’t have to redo a single piece. In general, PETG, whether from Bambu Lab or from third-party providers, is very effortless to print on the X2D.
TPU
So far, due to time constraints, we’ve only been able to test the TPU for AMS, which is considerably harder than 90A. We printed a sandal using PLA for supports, and the 22-hour print went smoothly. The supports came off almost cleanly, except for some parts in the center where the PLA support material was intertwined with the sandal’s lattice structure. It was a challenge to remove the support, which somewhat clashes with Bambu Lab’s claim that the dual extruder means the supports can just peel away. However, we must consider that some “post-processing” will always be required in 3D printing (after all, come on, we manufactured shoes, one of the most labor-intensive consumer products you could make, right on our desktop).
PA6 GF
One of the prints that impressed me the most was a relatively simple, small box printed using Bambu Lab’s PA6 GF. The print itself isn’t particularly challenging, other than requiring good dimensional stability so the top screws onto the bottom part correctly. But beyond that, the print has a surface finish that’s genuinely striking. It has a highly precise surface texture, while the smooth parts seem to shine thanks to the glass fiber in the material. Nylon, even composite nylon, isn’t an easy material to print because it’s highly hygroscopic and doesn’t adhere easily to the plate. We used the AMS HT to keep it dry and heated at the right temperature, and the final result was impressive.
Overall, the most impressive aspect of the X2D is how easily it prints with all these different materials, print after print, even after hundreds of hours of printing. With one single exception, whenever we started a print, we ended up with a successful finished part. In our experience, similarly priced printers can deliver comparable results on PLA and PETG, but things get more complicated as temperature requirements rise. The X2D prints ABS, PC, and nylon (and TPUs, to be confirmed) as easily as it prints PLA, for a starting price of just €629. That’s a game changer.
