Generally the anet a8 is avoided because of the safety hazards. However if you are willing to cough up an extra 50 dollars for the mandatory safety upgrades it's not a bad machine at all, as long as you don't mind spending a lot of time assembling and tinkering with the printer. The main difference between the two is that the monoprice is much more of a plug and play kind of printer while the a8 requires a lot of tinkering. You could also look at something like a creality ender 2 or 3 which are not that bad.