VoxelMatters Review of the Snapmaker U1, simply the best 4-color 3D printer

Unpacking (short version)

The Snapmaker U1 is built around a four-toolhead tool-changer architecture on a CoreXY frame, with lightweight carbon-fiber rods on the X-axis to reduce moving mass at high speeds. Priced at $999 (€899), the machine offers a 270 × 270 × 270 mm build volume, a maximum print speed of 500 mm/s, and acceleration of 20,000 mm/s². The SnapSwap tool changer uses steel-ball kinematic couplings to dock and lock each of the four proprietary stainless-steel toolheads and automatically calibrates XYZ offsets to within 0.04 mm. Tool changes take approximately five seconds—compared to roughly two minutes for purge-based systems—and because each toolhead carries its own dedicated filament, cross-contamination purging is eliminated, with only a small prime tower required to clear any material that has degraded during standby.

VoxelMatters received the U1 ahead of its April 10 global launch and came away with a strongly positive first impression, particularly of the hardware. The setup process is fully automated and takes about an hour, and the first print—using Snapmaker’s pre-loaded optimized file and official materials—delivered excellent quality with precise color transitions. The main area where the system trails more established competitors is software: Snapmaker Orca is still in beta, and its model library has a more limited ecosystem than those built around Bambu Lab, Prusa, or Creality. The companion app, by contrast, is accessible and easy to use, with high-quality camera monitoring, though the camera angle required minor adjustment during initial testing.

For details on unpacking and setup, see our initial report here. To learn more about what it’s like to print with the Snapmaker U1, read on.

In loving colors

Printing with the Snapmaker U1 is a great overall experience. This compact machine has been built to make printing fun and easy. It’s rapidly becoming one of our favorite 3D printers, and the more we use it — at the time of writing, we are up to about 50 hours of printing — the more we like it. Everything about it is enjoyable, from loading the filaments to capturing stop-motion videos of prints in progress.

The Snapmaker filaments are excellent as well, which may partly explain the high print quality even at standard 200-micron layers. After 50 hours of use, we have not had a single failed print, and the machine feels well-built and reliable.

We started with PLA. Snapmaker included four mini spools in the first shipment: red, yellow, white, and black. Our very first print combined all four colors to produce the Snapmaker mascot dragon, which the company pre-loaded into the machine for quick access. We expected no complications — instead, we were struck by the speed and the minimal filament waste. Literally five microscopic purge curls, roughly one per color. The roughly 8-cm-tall multicolor dragon took just a couple of hours. We are not running specific comparisons with other multicolor printers here, but this is the fastest performance we have seen.

That first print gave us a clear sense of how efficiently the machine handles waste. After 50 hours of printing — not exclusively multicolor parts — the filament waste container is still not full. The advantages of the Snapmaker system are clear: speed, efficiency, superior reliability (no risk of magnetic nozzles detaching), and very fast filament changes. The main limitations are that the system is capped at four colors per print, with no option to add more automatically. Snapmaker’s “Full Spectrum Color Printing” project could address this, but it remains to be seen how practical it is for the more occasional users (still, you can get a great preview of the possibilities in this video). The other limitation is in the software—a common challenge for any company without an established 3D model marketplace like Prusa’s Printables or AI-driven creation tools like Bambu Lab’s MakerWorld and MakerLab. In most cases, Bambu Lab files can be imported into Snapmaker Orca and printed in color.

Putting it to work

We reached out to Snapmaker to request additional filaments to run the machine as extensively as possible, and they promptly sent a gift card for their online shop. The Snapmaker PLA and PETG filaments are high quality—they print well not just on the U1 but also on Prusa, Creality, Bambu Lab, and Elegoo 3D printers. The matte colors work particularly well for end-use products, and the PETG’s shiny finish suits certain applications, too. The downside is that many filaments—especially the most common colors, black and white—were out of stock on the website for an extended period, likely reflecting strong demand alongside supply chain constraints that many hardware 3D printing companies face.

We managed to source a dozen spools and immediately got to work. One of the first prints was a multi-part desktop clock. This was not a multicolor print but a multi-part assembly, designed to test dimensional stability and part-to-part fit. The machine passed with no issues, and the overall quality produced a clean, finished, functional object. Having different materials — white, brown, and black — loaded across separate toolheads meant zero filament waste.

We ran several other prints before feeling confident enough to use the Snapmaker U1 for serial production. We used matte colors to create several beautiful vases because we received many requests from relatives and friends. We used models found on MakerWorld and the vase creation app from MakerLab to source and create 3D printable models.

For more inspiration, we turned to Dungeon Crawler Carl, a book and audiobook series that has emerged as one of the most successful examples of RPG-lit to date. It follows the main characters, Carl and his talking cat, Princess Donut, through a global dungeon crawl—a role-playing scenario in which players work through increasingly difficult enemies and bosses. Author Matt Dinniman has created a wide cast of side characters, and fans have been designing and printing them. We joined in.

We first used the U1 to print several characters at once—my girlfriend’s nephews later had fun painting them: Prepotente, the talking goat; Baptista, the feline-man; Tina, the bear-child-turned-dinosaur; and Samantha, the talking inflatable doll head, among others. We filled about half the print tray, running six characters at a time.

We then filled the tray completely to attempt serial production of one character: Zev, Carl and Donut’s social media manager, a small fish-woman roughly six centimeters tall. We printed 28 of them in a single run, in a single color. The print took about 11 hours.

One issue came up: a print near the edge of the plate detached. The machine detected the failure remotely via the Snapmaker app, flagged the spaghettification event, and stopped the print, giving us the option to skip the failed part and resume printing. We did so once back at the lab. The spaghetti detection sensor worked exactly as intended.

We shared the finished Zevs in a Dungeon Crawler Carl Facebook community, and the response was enthusiastic.

We also used third-party rainbow-colored PLA to print the Sluggaloo, an axe-wielding giant slug from the same series. Multiple copies for an army. We printed an infinity cube fidget toy with the same material. Both came out excellent, confirming that third-party PLA works fine on the Snapmaker U1.

Multicolor productivity

The biggest asset of the Snapmaker U1—and the reason it became one of the most-funded crowdfunding projects in 3D printing—is its ability to print multicolor parts quickly and with minimal waste. Its main drawback is the limited selection of color-ready 3D models in Snapmaker’s own marketplace, which currently offers only a handful. Snapemaker’s strategy seems to be to keep the selection to a limited number of printability-proven models, such as the Snapmaker dragon mascot and a cool-looking fuzzy penguin that we tested, getting a perfect result. The most practical source for multicolor files remains Bambu Lab’s MakerWorld and MakerLab apps.

We started with a multicolor fidget toy to test reliability on a plate of serially printed PLA parts. All items came out cleanly, with a great finish, excellent multicolor adhesion and perfectly printed moving interconnected parts.

We moved to a three-color fidget toy made up of multiple distinct parts, each group printed in a different color. On a standard AMS-type single-toolhead system, this approach would be inefficient — the frequent color changes would significantly slow the print. On the Snapmaker U1, it makes complete sense: material changes are near-instantaneous and require no purging.

After, we switched to multicolor PETG, which allowed us to test the filament loading and unloading process more thoroughly. All four filaments can be queued for unloading and reloading from a single screen. The most time-consuming step is physically swapping the spools. The filament is inserted into the feeder, pushed into the toolhead, and automatically recognized by the machine if it’s a Snapmaker-branded product. Third-party filaments can be set manually in a few taps.

To test the PETG materials, we used a multicolor gadget celebrating FC Inter Milan’s 21st league. title: a black and blue snake wrapped around the number 21. We printed dozens to hand out to friends and fellow stadium-goers. It was a relatively simple print in terms of geometry, though color detail required precision, and the machine handled every part without issue. We then gave it a set of multicolor fidget pad toys for a longer PETG test run. Results were excellent overall, though one of the five items showed minor defects — the result of printing without supports or brims.

Finally, we printed a black PETG box for a DJI Osmo video accessory, using two relatively large parts to test adhesion on a part that filled most of the plate area. Both prints came out easily.

And the best part? Do you see the transparent container for the filament spurge waste in the back of the toolbox? That’s all the filament waste we have accumulated so far, including all the prints listed above (and several others we didn’t mention).

Slicing it up

Snapmaker’s slicer is based on Orca, so supports and brims are handled with the same ease that users of any Orca-based slicer will recognize. The interface — still in beta — is clean and accessible. Like Bambu Studio, it allows assigning filament colors during file preparation and confirms them when sending to the printer. Color painting, fuzzy skin, and other standard Orca functions are all available.

The software retains Orca Slicer’s core slicing and processing capabilities while adding remote printer monitoring and control for a smooth printing experience. One small friction point: every time you connect, you need to re-select and reconnect the printer. The process is quick and has been flawless so far, but if you want to switch to the mobile app, you need to disconnect from the desktop software first.

Snapmaker Orca supports sending print tasks to your printer via WAN/LAN networks and monitoring printing details remotely. You can also manage multiple printers in the device list. Both the monitoring and the stop-motion video capture features worked flawlessly and are easy to set up.

A flexible system

The Snapmaker team encouraged us to try printing in TPU. It’s a material we approach cautiously—feeding it through AMS-style systems often risks clogging the nozzle or jamming the feeder. The upside is that TPU’s durability—high impact resistance, wear and tear resistance, and chemical resistance—makes it ideal for many end-use products, from footwear and toys to industrial parts like gaskets and tools.

The standard Snapmaker TPU is rated 95A High Flow. Compared to standard TPU, the High Flow formulation is optimized for higher-speed printing at 80 to 100 mm/s. New color options for this filament were released during our test period, so we had to try them.

Once filament flow is dialed in, most printers can handle most TPUs without major issues. The best thing about printing TPU on the Snapmaker U1 is how easy loading is. The second-best thing is that multicolor TPU prints — up to four colors — work with no special adjustments, unlike other multicolor systems, which handle them less gracefully. Bambu Lab, for instance, had to release AMS-specific TPU filaments to support the same workflow.

The Snapmaker U1 printed Snapmaker 95A HF TPU without any issues. We first tested it on a multicolor FC Inter keychain and printed several sizes. It was an easy print, but it was also the first time we printed a multicolor TPU part, and we didn’t know what to expect. We only ran into a minor issue at the end when, for some reason, the system said that the printhead’s coordinates were beyond its standard range. Probably just a minor glitch, since the print job had already been completed.

Feeling more confident, we then moved on to third-party TPU filaments. First, we used a 95A HF from another brand. We printed a flexible purse that nearly filled the plate’s entire width. It came out with no issues to note. It was clear from the quality of the very first layer that the results would be ideal. As we loaded up the 95A HF, we saw that Snapmaker also supports 90A TPU, so we are going to try that next (again from a third-party material supplier). But we’ll publish an update for that because the time has come to get this review out there (otherwise we’ll just keep trying new things and never publish it).

In fact, the results were so good that we are tempted to make this our dedicated TPU system. Or get a new one to dedicate to these materials.

At just $899, it makes a lot of sense.