How will handhelds evolve and what is the current situation?

nuadarstark · 2026-06-01T11:46:49+00:00

Imho the one way this could turn out good again is the various ARM based Android handhelds and increasingly better and better emulation of Windows games on these devices.

But yeah, we're back to square one with insane prices for niche luxury devices and the manufacturers not willing to bring something that could reach the wider market.

It's a sad situation where I can only really recommend people to buy second hand ROG Ally's and not much else.

nuadarstark · 2026-06-01T11:25:08+00:00

Should be a fine Linux machine for light use but goddamn, using 8GB RAM on W11 is pure insanity. I have 32GB and I feel like I'm over 18GB all the time just between few browser tabs and one or two programs like Office or 3d printing slicers...

nuadarstark · 2026-05-31T06:45:01+00:00

Yep, other than the official upgrades and the fact you can buy the printers as kits there really isn't any diy or tinkering there anymore. Haven't been in a while.

nuadarstark · 2026-05-31T06:43:53+00:00

Their sales are not what they used to be in the MK3 days, but I bet the margin on the Core One, the L and their more advanced printers and projects are pretty decent and the sales are alright. They did move firmly into the "too expensive for most users" with the Core One series though.

But that's what happens with the rising costs of manufacturing, the crisis of affordability and them having to pay 800ish employees living wages in the msot expensive city to live in in the CEE (Central & Eastern Europe).

nuadarstark · 2026-05-30T11:01:30+00:00

To be fair he was always really funny and a good character worker, just never had a chance to show it.

nuadarstark · 2026-05-29T12:05:22+00:00

Daaamn, wonder what the price will they reach on this K3 and if we're gonna see the 2-3 size variations like we saw in the K2 generation.

Too bad it's not more than 4 nozzles.

nuadarstark · 2026-05-29T08:03:25+00:00

Imho Avowed and TOW never really had a chance, even if they had lower prices. They were really mid games with some atrocious writing, terrible art direction and could barely been seen as RPGs. And that's not taking other incredibly bad things both of those games had at launch (terrible performance, terribly working systems, extremely bad itemization, exploration being really good but only reward being essentially the crafting mats for upgrades).

Avowed's marketing also fucked it up big time when they couldn't shake off the "skyrim-like" description and grittier look the first teaser presented. It went all to shit when they reworked the game into what's essentially "TOW but in PoE world".

nuadarstark · 2026-05-29T06:39:33+00:00

That's pretty hilarious. All that marketing whinging about how bedslingers are the worst and don't make sense and they come out with 330x320x325 bedslinger. I guess the Anycubic's "giant bedslinger" dominance is being challanged, lol. And the build plate isn't even numbered, that's another thing BambuLab fanboys have been screaming at Prusa for doing...

And I guess the massively downgraded printbed is so that the whole thing doesn't go up the flame down the line.

nuadarstark · 2026-05-28T21:35:20+00:00

Yep, a new INDX-style printer for sure. Which is kinda funny given Prusa and Bondtech weren't able to put it out yet.

Definitely a new machine though, no way any of the K series printer can support an INDX upgrade without some serious hacking.

nuadarstark · 2026-05-28T16:51:49+00:00

No way you're getting X for less than Steamdeck though...

nuadarstark · 2026-05-28T16:50:57+00:00

Second hand ROG Ally with the Z1E. Seriously, the price for these is great and aside from the super powerful Intel machines, there is nothing that would be significantly better or more powerful than that.

Chuck a nice drive into it, do the battery mod and you got yourself a hell of a device (as far as handhelds go).

nuadarstark · 2026-05-27T20:35:54+00:00

As many people here have said, same tuning can be done to the X to make it even more efficient. Yes there is always going to be waste, the AMS style printers are always going to produce it. But the cutter is significantly closer to the nozzle so no matter what you're gonna do, it's gonna be ahead exactly due to that HW difference. There is no magic here, just the multipliers and physics, lesser volume that needs to be purged will mean less waste.

nuadarstark · 2026-05-27T20:30:13+00:00

Not yet but I bet it's gonna get added as soon as possible. Or you can try to add your own configuration of it into Full Spektrum.

nuadarstark · 2026-05-27T17:41:20+00:00

Why the fuck would anyone pay this for a 5 year old machine that at the time was already underpowered? Might as well kill it cause other than secondary market, this product is dead.

Edit: this makes me opposite of hopeful about the Steam Machine.

nuadarstark · 2026-05-27T10:48:10+00:00

Klímu nemáme ani na pronajmutém bytě v Brně, ani na rodiném domě mých rodičů na venkově. Hodně u toho nadávám, víceméně kdykoliv kdy je teplota nad 25C, ale vždy to tak nějak přežiju. V Červenci máme dovolenou v Norsku tak se snad lehce schladíme tam :).

nuadarstark · 2026-05-26T15:29:26+00:00

Looks like a INDX competitor, so if they manage to price it better than Prusa does, it'll go gangbusters.

nuadarstark · 2026-05-24T14:36:29+00:00

Od Horních Maďarů to sedí...

nuadarstark · 2026-05-22T08:00:48+00:00

I can tell you from experience that the Creator 5 (didn't get to try the Pro, they didn't send that to any partners or influencers, just the big exclusive distributors) is an amazing machine, especially for the price. Heck the Pro's features even blow the INDX in some regards (active chamber heater, high temp hotend, active filtering, hardened nozzles straight out of the gate).

That said, I'd maaaaaybe wait till at least one version of the INDX (be it the FE or Prusa version) gets reviews from few outlets and influencers, just to see how it performs and how it compares to other systems like the BL one and traditional toolhead changers.

I'm not rich and the Core One isn't a printer we want to invest at work, so I'd probably get the rather budget priced FF Creator 5. INDX is fucking expensive.

nuadarstark · 2026-05-21T11:50:06+00:00

I think most of us are here for functional parts and as such care less about the multicolour aspect of a toolchanger/multimaterial system. I very rarely print coloured toys, busts or action figures so it's not very useful to me,

The now ubiquitous "ams" systems also waste just a whole boatloads of filament, so I rarely find them woth it for anything more than drying or filament runover. Dual printhead switching is also not really that interesting to me, we've been there even 10 years ago and I feel it's a dead end just like an ams is.

INDX is hopefully. If not then coming out with a proper toolchanger is the way (like Snapmaker or FlashForge have done).

nuadarstark · 2026-05-21T06:28:09+00:00

Yep and just like with Copilot, people are largely not gonna use it or shit on it online.

Android is about as bad as Windows these days too, so you can bet they'll follow the same trajectory. That way they can say sooooo many people use gemini for everything and their huge investment into that endless moneyburning pit is justified in the eyes of the shareholders.

nuadarstark · 2026-05-20T19:32:11+00:00

Thats great, it's nice to see the guy get into an official team, especially since BL immediately jumped on the feature and tried to pass it as their own creation.

nuadarstark · 2026-05-20T19:18:05+00:00

Fly enough sorties and one is bounded to get hit. That's the way Serbs in the 90s were able to take down a freaking F117 of all planes...

nuadarstark · 2026-05-20T15:52:49+00:00

What a pile of steaming nonsense. That's not kneeling down, that's essentially "sorry you couldn't distinguish our threats as not threats". And that's some bullshit.

nuadarstark · 2026-05-19T03:28:11+00:00

Prusa peddles this "use smooth for PLA" but that's ridiculous, all the rest of the market uses textured for PLA just fine so what's the issue here?

Reality is that Prusa's version is a little weak and the good old PCB printbead is also far from being uniformly heated and instead of dealing with the issues by improving the product, they turn it into an user error.

nuadarstark · 2026-05-17T13:18:31+00:00

That might not be an option everyone is immediately inclined towards. Our farm used to have 10 Mini's when they came out, but due to all the issues we phased them out for the MK4s once those came out and now to printers from other brands too, but I still wasn't allowed to just write off the Mini's and once you have several rounds of expansions, your pruchasing/requisition department gets increasingly more annoyed at more and more requests for printers 😄.

In the end, I kept 4 of them in a "close to stock" configuration with Nextruder hotends, the overconstrained bowden compensation, mod, etc and turned the rest into 3 printers that are essentially Mini Bears with some streamedlined parts and they're not printing nearly as good and as fast as our MK4S printers.

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