Creality Ender 3 S1 Plus 3D Printer

As always, Creality 3D swung in a surprise and extended the Ender 3 S1 Series with a new larger machine featuring amazing beginner-friendly features, the Ender 3 S1 Plus. At DIYElectronics, we are passionate about bringing great quality 3D Printers to the South African market and growing the Maker Community. We believe the original Ender 3 S1 is one of the best to come out of Creality, as it essentially includes everything we loved about the Ender 3 V2 with major mouth-watering upgrades. Similarly, the Ender 3 S1 Plus is reminiscent of the Ender 3 Max, taking this beloved Ender 3 design even further!

The Ender 3 S1 Plus includes all the great preinstalled upgrades we saw in the Ender 3 S1 and jumbo sizes your print area to 300x300x300mm. Automatic bed-levelling, a Sprite direct drive extruder and more classy features add to the user experience and absolute convenience. The Creality Ender 3 S1 Plus is well worth its price tag for the fact it arrives pre-installed with many of the upgraded parts you may have bought later on for your 3D Printer anyway. While many of its features are the same as the Ender 3 S1, let’s take a look at everything that makes the Ender 3 S1 Plus your best choice:

Noteworthy Features of the Creality Ender 3 S1 Plus:

• 300x300x300m Build Volume – The first, most obvious feature you will immediately notice is the larger print bed. Although slightly smaller than an Ender 3 Max, this print area is more than enough for tackling bigger bolder projects.
• “Sprite” Direct Drive Extruder – Newly developed by Creality themselves, the Sprite Direct Drive Extruder and hotend reaches up to 260°C. The interesting dual-gear design is perfect for printing PLA, ABS, PETG, and various flexible filaments like TPU. Feeding with up to 80N force, this extruder minimalizes the distance your filament must travel to the hotend. Loading new 3D filament becomes pain-free and the extruder’s extra control brings cleaner print results. The main standout difference between the Sprite and other Creality extruders is the heatsink, which integrates into the mounting plate, allowing the cooling fan to blow completely through the heatsink. Creality claims this change significantly reduces the chances of clogging, leaving you to enjoy 3D printing issue free.
• CR Touch Automatic Bed-Levelling – The Ender 3 S1 Plus still provides the classic manual levelling knobs on the print carriage, but the installation of the CR touch means your struggle to find that perfect level is over. Automatic bed-levelling is a popular upgrade that’s beginning to become a standard feature for modern 3D Printer models. With this in mind, Creality has improved their original BL Touch into the CR Touch with a metallic sensor pin and optical sensor technology. Your Ender 3 S1 Plus will automatically level using 16 points on the bed surface and compensate for any differing height points while printing.
• Flexible Magnetic PC Spring Steel Sheet – The Ender 3 standard Buildtak bed is now replaced on the Ender 3 S1 Plus with a PC-coated spring steel bed which peels off the platform and flexes to pop prints easily off the bed. This sturdier and tougher print surface performs wonderfully for good bed adhesion. Flexible build plates bring a new level of convenience to your 3D Printing experience, eliminating any need to shovel your 3D Prints off the bed as it often feels like using a scraper.
• Dual Z-Axis Motors and Dual-leadscrews – Although the new Sprite Extruder is a lightweight design, Creality has gone a step further to include dual Z-axis screws and motors. This extra power and synchronized coordination means your x-axis gantry, where the hotend sits, is guided smoothly as it moves up or down. Because of the additional weight of a direct drive extruder on the print head, problems may arise if the X gantry is off-balanced or wobbles, creating poor quality 3D prints. However, with two Z-axis motors on the Ender 3 S1 Plus, the stability of the X-axis is ensured and makes for an overall reliable machine.

The Ender 3 S1 Plus design shows a few extra tweaks to make it the perfect faithful companion ready to take the next challenge you throw at it. When directly compared to the original Ender 3 S1, we found that the display has been upgraded to a colour touch screen with a Creality touch interface, the manual levelling knobs are now a stylish red and metal, and the extruder’s housing and spring tension lever are upgraded to metal as well. We can’t stop ourselves from also mentioning that the Ender 3 S1 Plus again gives us a 32-bit silent motherboard with ultra-silent drivers, a filament runout sensor, a convenient toolbox drawer, and mercifully a full-sized SD card slot alongside a Type-C USB connection port. These small thoughtful additions on top of the fantastic features discussed above are exactly why the Ender 3 S1 Plus is a gem to have for any Maker.

Our Verdict on the Creality Ender 3 S1 Plus 3D Printer:

With many of the same features seen on the original Ender 3 S1, there is not much to discuss with the Ender 3 S1 Plus. Still, we couldn’t help being drawn to that much larger build volume that allows us to take full advantage of the convenient auto-levelling and quality print surface for big projects. Especially knowing the amount of filament and time is soaked up for long prints, it is a great comfort to know the Ender 3 S1 Plus will get the job done more often than not and with smooth impressive results.

We truly feel the Creality Ender 3 S1 Plus has everything you need to hit the ground printing in what many often view as a very inaccessible hobby. While it is true you must be prepared to do some self-learning, the Ender 3 S1 Plus has a simple 6 step assembly process that gets you printing almost right out of the box. You will be creating beautiful masterpieces within a matter of days or even hours. And remember, if you ever get stuck, there are mountain-loads of resources available online, DIY Communities that can help you troubleshoot quality issues, and many different guides and tutorials on YouTube just waiting for you to learn from.

The only slight disappointment we had in reviewing this machine was the missing titanium heat break in the Sprite hotend assembly which would have allowed for up to 300°C. Instead, this standard Sprite assembly only allows for a standard 260°C maximum that limits you to PLA, PETG, TPU, and ABS filaments. But with so many fun features drawing our eyes, the Creality Ender 3 S1 Plus makes up for it with its automatic bed levelling, easy direct drive loading of filament, and easy print removal with a flexible build plate. The Ender 3 S1 Plus near eliminates many of the struggles beginner Makers experience when starting out and includes a large print volume for those looking to make ambitious projects. Even if you are not a beginner, these awesome features are certainly attractive and will elevate your 3D Printing experience with so much more convenience.

For a great second-opinion of the Ender 3 S1 Plus 3D Printer, Aurora Tech has posted a fantastic informative YouTube video that discusses the differences of this machine, guides you through the assembly and reviews its pros and cons:

Although Creality 3D have been working within the industry since 2014, their addition of the Creality CR-10 series is what really catapulted them to the front line of competition, as it offered substantially better quality compared to other 3D printers – while simultaneously reducing the cost and complexities of the machines.

The quality of Creality’s 3D Printers and accessories shows through in their market history, with the brand selling around 3000 printers in their first year on the market, followed by about 10,000 sales over the next year. Now, Creality easily sells around 30,000 or more 3D printers each year, with sales continuously rising as they bring out more models. These are impressive numbers when considering the fact that they entered the industry as unknown competitors, quickly rising through the ranks and now even competing with Wanhao and similar top brands.

If you are looking for excellent 3D Printers that offer affordability without compromising on quality, Creality 3D is certainly a brand that you should take note of. From the basic Creality Ender 2 all the way up to the large build volume Creality CR-10 S5, there are few other brands who are capable of offering such a refined package while still maintaining some of the most enticing prices in the industry.