- Today I'm gonna pit two 3-D printers against each other
in a death match race to the finish
where two printers enter and only one emerges victorious.
Really, I'm just gonna set a stopwatch
as they print some cats.
My name is Tom, this is The Enthusiasm Project
and today I'm going to test out
the Monoprice Select Mini and Monoprice Delta Mini
3D printers to just see which one prints fastest.
I've been doing a lot of videos
about these two printers lately,
which I'll link to down below
and in pretty much any video
that I mention with the Delta,
I talked about how fast it is as a printer,
and I've had several people then ask
how much faster is it than the Mini.
A lot of people try to choose between these two printers
and speed kinda makes a difference.
So, I've put together a very un-scientific test
where using the exact same Hatchbox PLA filament
I had each printer print the exact same file,
which just happened to be the cat file
that comes with the printer.
And both prints were also printed on the glass beds
that I reviewed a couple weeks ago.
I'll put a link to that right here in this area.
I'll put some links down below as well
if you want to buy them for yourself.
They're Amazon affiliate links,
they do help support this channel.
There's also a 15% code
if you want to get 15% off these glass beds.
(upbeat rock music)
Now, I had fully expected the Delta
to be faster than the Mini,
but what I didn't expect was for it to print
a higher quality print than the Mini.
That was kinda shocking to me.
So, my first test was a little bit inaccurate.
I just went to each printer and printed
the default cat model that came on each SD card.
And the Select Mini completed its cat print
in two hours and 55 minutes,
where the Delta Mini completed its cat print
in one hour and 16 minutes.
So, that's a huge difference.
Now, there's also a difference because as you can see,
these are not the same size print.
So, the overall print quality on these
is about the same, but I guess because the Delta Mini's
build plate is much smaller than the Select Mini,
the default cat model that comes with it
is set to a smaller scale than the one
on the Select Mini.
So, even though those were default settings,
which you would think would be the optimal
settings for the printers,
it didn't seem like an accurate test,
since the cats were two different sizes.
So I had the Delta Mini print another cat model
that's the same size as the one
that the Select Mini printed,
and this took two hours and 25 minutes on the Delta Mini.
So, about a half hour less than the Select Mini.
But what really blew me away
is that the print quality on this one from the Delta
is way better than the one from the Select Mini.
Even somebody who has no experience 3D printing
could look at the two of these
and clearly tell a difference in quality.
They're both solid prints,
especially for $200 and under printers,
but the one from the Delta is really really high quality,
it looks like something that Prusa would have put out.
And so, this kinda leads to a strange predicament,
because the Delta now prints faster,
again 30 minutes faster to print this over this,
and the quality is better.
However, in setting up these printers for this test,
I was also reminded how much easier it is
to print on the Select Mini.
That printer was just up and ready
and ready to go right away,
whereas the Delta Mini had a clogged nozzle,
and then sometimes when you press Print
instead of printing it just retracts all the filament
out of the printer.
So, it ended up taking like, four tries
before it actually got the print to work properly.
And then once it was going,
everything was perfect.
But it was definitely a lot more frustrating
to get it to that point than it was on the Mini,
which you just turn on, push a button,
and you're done.
And so, I'm still continually impressed by the Delta Mini,
but I still would recommend the Select Mini
as a first printer over the Delta.
I definitely think the Delta's a fun
second or third printer,
especially if you don't mind kind of playing around
with it a little bit,
but for your first printer,
it would probably be a little bit
too frustrating to deal with,
even though it does give very fast and very good results.
So, I hope that was a helpful speed print comparison
between these two really popular printers.
Let me know your experience, your thoughts
in the comments down below.
Make sure to subscribe if you haven't subscribed already,
and I will catch you guys next time.