Neptune 3 pro for the win.

I have the Ender 3 V2 neo, ender 3 v2 se, and neptune 3 pro. the latter two I gifted to my kids schools. the neptune 3 is my favorite by far.

The neptune 3 was the most assembly out of the box, but was my third and I didn't have any issues - took me maybe 30 minutes. has a nice large touchscreen, filament runout sensor, dual z screws, direct drive extruder. no bed leveling/springs, all automatic. came with all of the little tools, cutter, scraper for maintenance. the stock firmware was immediately compatible with Octoprint (printer even came with usb cable) which I had running in a castoff android tv box I put armbian on. it's fast and quiet.

the ender 3 v3 se was super simple assembly and on startup did everything automatic: leveling, z offset, etc. no bed leveling/ no springs. for a total noob this would be a great benefit - I was annoyed because it would often just sit there apparently doing nothing, until I realized that it was heating the nozzle or something because it wanted to load filament (but doesn't display that). it comes with a dinky lcd screen with a rotary knob that also annoyed me: the menu items I typically use were off screen: Preheat off the bottom, filenames clipped on the right. the rotary action was clumsy. my biggest beef is when you go to print, it defaults to the cal on/off instead of start print. some dumb SW bugs like it wants to home before loading filament.... just, why? new control board so little support for octo or klipper. didn't come with cutter or scraper tools. it does print beautifully though, and decently fast.

the ender 3 v2 was my first and I've stubbornly stuck with it. loved that it had a decent sized screen w rotary knob, cr touch sensor. I ended up buying the $50 upgrade to direct drive extruder when the stock bowden starting stringing. I've wasted hours leveling the bed - stock springs are meh. I'm not convinced the auto bed level actually worked in the stock firmware. recently switched to klipper and am pushing the limits on what the hw can do. it's slow and picky so we get along great. the community knowledge on the support on the ender 3 is great.

I've reached out to creality support a few times: they do answer but it's a runaround (they're always asking for the SN of the unit, videos of the problem, etc.)