I am having a lot of fun with my MP Select Mini 3D printer which I received on 7/1/2016, but it's also giving me lots of headaches. This is an exciting new product with a lot of potential to be a great entry-level, consumer grade 3D printer, but it will only reach that potential after MP works with the manufacturer to solve the quality control issues that plague this product.

First, the provided "brick on a leash" desktop power supply is junk. Mine failed instantly on first application of AC power with two audible pops as the regulator chip and several surrounding components exploded. Since I received my printer on the Friday before the long Independence Day weekend, I didn't want to languish all weekend waiting to start an RMA on Tuesday, followed by weeks of waiting for more stock of this very popular printer to arrive to replace mine. So I voided my warranty by lopping off the DC power cable so I could use it to power my printer from a beefy power supply I already had.

That got me printing that evening, and all was well for a couple days. Then, I got the common and dreaded "Sensor failed" error message when one of the extruder thermistor leads broke. So I found suitable replacements on Amazon, waited several days for them to arrive, and got my printer back up and running the following weekend. Along with adding a 3D-printed bracket to mount a cooling fan over the controller board (which I've read is prone to overheating), this got my printer up and running again, and I made several more successful prints.

Now by this time, with a mere few of days of operating time, the extruder fan is already getting quite noisy. I think its bearings are failing, and I have a replacement on the way from a reputable electronics component distributor. It should arrive by this next weekend.

So, I fired the printer up this evening to make a quick print of something I found on Thingiverse, and now it appears that the build platform thermistor has failed. Luckily I ordered a ten pack of replacement thermistors when I fixed the extruder, so I should be able to fix the machine yet again this weekend.

Now please keep in mind that all of this has transpired over less than two weeks. I've been active in various MP Select Mini 3D printer enthusiast forums, and reports of power supply and thermistor failures are very common.

If MP can work with the manufacturer to bring the build quality of this product up to acceptable levels, then this will be a great little product. Until then, I cannot recommend it, and I'm giving it two stars. If I didn't have these reliability issues, then I would have rated it at least four stars. Maybe even five. I'll keep on repairing, upgrading and enjoying my printer and participating the MP Select Mini community, and I really hope that MP will push the manufacturer to make the quality improvements necessary to make this a great product. I am resubmitting this review with a four-star rating, because it never appeared on the Monoprice site after submission with a two-star rating.


PROS: Inexpensive
Small
Stand-alone operation
Enthusiastic community

CONS: Poor quality control
Power supply is unreliable
Thermistors are unreliable
Extruder fan bearing does not last long

This printer is perfect as a "my first 3D printer." It's on the low end in terms of specs, but the performance and quality of the final prints are great. It comes ready to print out of the box and is very easy to setup and use. There's also a great community around this printer, always finding ways to upgrade its capabilities or improve performance.
If you know you're going to get serious about 3D printing, there's a good chance you'll want a higher-end, more expensive printer. If you are only interested smaller prints or are looking for a way to explore 3D printing without committing a ton of money and labor to a larger more complicated machine, this is a great choice.

PROS: -Low price
-Very good print quality
-Quick setup - it's pretty much ready to go out of the box. Do a quick check to make sure it's calibrated and you're ready to start printing.
-Active community with plenty of tips and mods to help make the most of the printer.
-Several of the upgrades I've seen recommended by the community appear to have already been incorporated into the currently shipping printers.
-Great support from Monoprice
-Support told me that they are aware that many people who buy this printer will want to do more to it than just plug it in and print and they generally don't void the warranty for 'tinkering' or modding unless that's what caused the failure. I was told I could have opened up the casing and they would have still replaced it under warranty. This is an amazing policy and says a lot about Monoprice's understanding of the market and their users.

CONS: -Small print area - 120x120x120mm, the majority of things I've wanted to print have fit, but there have been a few that I've had to split in half before printing and then glue together, or just haven't been able to print.
-About one week (of near-constant use) after I received the printer, the z-axis limiter switch failed. Monoprice support was great and got me a replacement in less than a week from my call to support, no cost and no hassle.
-Not really a con, but be aware that only a small amount is filament is included. You will want to buy a spool of filament with this printer. I got a spool of Monoprice's white PLA (PID: 10552) and it's worked great.

This 3D printer may be small in size and price, but it boasts powerful features and is a workhorse. I have been pushing plastic through this little printer non-stop. All the parts for other broken toys I always wanted to redesign and improve are printed and working. This printer is truly amazing. First bit of advice - buy Simplify3D software. It pays for itself on first use of this 3D printer. Short answer: I LOVE THIS LITTLE PRINTER and would never part with it.

PROS: Cheap, small, efficient, full featured. No problems with getting support.

CONS: The instruction guide should be lit on fire - totally useless. Pay the ransom and get Simplify3D software - it made all else easy.

So this is my 3rd 3D printer. I find that the two larger printers I have seem to be constantly busy and after doing some reviews the select seemed like a good fit for a small printer I could make smaller parts with freeing up time of my larger printers. Having owned it for 2 weeks I will say that I have never had to "baby sit" a printer as much as I have with this one. For the first week the printer seemed to go strong, then the problems started. Ultimately the problem with this little printer is the feeder motor. It is just under powered. I currently have an open RMA request to return this one and hopefully get a working unit. Given its size, whenever you have a hot end jam its very painful to clean so make sure you season your hot end immediately. Also just like in another review, the fan causes vibration that is at just the level to interfere with the vocal levels of a tv so if you plan on running it in a room with others youll find yourself turning the volume up louder than normal.

I havent decided yet if I end up getting another unit and the other units have the same problem if I will return the printer permanently or simply take it apart and put a stronger motor in the unit seeing as the over all quality of the printer isn't all that bad for the price.

PROS: Solid build (frame wise)
Easy to setup / configure

CONS: Poor nema motors for at least the feeding mechanisms.
Poor fan. This thing has a solid frame of metal making it nice then they throw a crappy fan on the unit.

I'm retired electronics engineer. Got my Monoprice Mini Select about 3 months ago. Steep learning curve with lots of help from the MP Mini Select Facebook page. I had to level the bed out of the box, but then it printed very well for many PLA prints. Got into trouble with bed adhesion, but found acetone cleaning resolved that, then put on a PEI sheet and everything sticks down well, PLA needs a surface clean, but ABS stick really well.. Now starting to print ABS, bed heats up to 80 deg C no problem and after initial warping due to to much air on the piece. Put on a 40mm fan with a fan shroud I printed. ABS prints really well now. Had clogs, but cleared them. The Facebook page has been extremely useful in helping with the learning curve, the issues with clogs & bad prints. Add to that the excellent You Tube videos on Mono Price Mini Select by FDM_Guru. Up to now used the SD micro card to print. I use Thingiverse for finding interesting 3D prints to download and gain printing experience. Using Cura & Repetier for slicing and generating the gcode for printing. Now using Sketchup to create my own 3D prints.

PROS: Cheap, works very well, good quality printing for a very low price, heated bed. Parts are pretty generic and there are lots of parts out here which if applied correctly can improve your original printer. Although right out the box it's really great.

CONS: None really.

The MP Select Mini 3D Printer arrived a few hours ago. I went through the setup in the manual linked on this web page, stuck in a roll of black PLA selected baby.gcode from the demo files included, and it printed at 195°C, with the platform heater off. This is my first 3D printer, so I don't have much to compare it with, but it's better than a hobbyist product: You plug in it, give it a file, and it prints it. ( I did follow the setup instructions and did check the leveling alignment. It seemed fine to me.)

I use a Mac, so I haven't yet been able to get Cura on Mac to successfully slice an stl file to give me a .gcode file that works. The PDF manual has lo-res screenshots of the settings for Windows, but they show a much higher extruder temperature than the sample .gcode file that comes with the printer.

PROS: Pros: •  color screen * works out-of-the-box.

CONS: • No sample PLA included (at least I couldn't find any)
• At the time of this writing, no printer definition file linked from this page for use in Cura.

I can't believe this solid little printer for $200. Right out of the box, I did a quick nozzle height adjustment, I didn't go through any elaborate levelling: I just turned each screw 1/4 turn until it was adjusted. I printed the elephant right off of the included micro sd card. Three hours later, an excellent print. Amazing. I have not yet printed anything else, as I have had trouble getting change cura settings for this printer. But I guess that's a software issue.

PROS: Price. Solid build. Works right out of the box (with a slight adjustment)
My first print was great
Lots of online groups.
Its a Malyan printer (so parts may be available)
I love having it on my desk.

CONS: Parts may not be available
It may not last long, or it may need a new hot end (see above)
It's not fast

I have spent a lot of time this summer printing in a local makerspace, and for the price of this printer I couldn't pass up the opportunity to do some of my printing work at home. The price of the printer, tools and filament was less that I was going to pay to have some prototypes made.
I haven't had the power supply failure that a lot of people talk about, and apparently I have a later generation of the hardware that has some changes to the print head. Aside from making a new knob, I haven't done any of the modifications suggested on the internet. I've had a kinked filament jam the print head, but that's the only snag so far.
There is a very active community online supporting this printer, and there are a lot of good tips on how to get really good quality prints from it. With some attention to detail for the leveling and height adjustments of the print bed, I'm getting much better quality prints than I did from the $1500 printers in my makerspace.



PROS: price
compact
sturdy
good community support

CONS: availability of spare parts
could use some locktite on some of the internal screws

Truly great product ! At less than 200.00 and just a few minutes of setup, anyone can become a small manufacturer, creating anything that they can imagine. The fun and excitement is worth way more than the price of the product.


PROS: Price
Performance
Maintanence

CONS: takes a bit of work to get the file onto the SD card if you're not equipped to do so.

Wow, what can I say? I've had this little gem for about 48 hours now. I returned my MOD-t after many, many failed prints. I loved the aesthetics of it, but nothing would adhere no matter what I would do. I found this Monoprice 15365 on Amazon shortly after returning the $399 MOD-t. I took a gamble for $200. This thing is AMAZING! I wish I could print directly to it via USB or WiFI, and perhaps I can make the USB printing happen, but I've only tried CURA so far. Print detail is out of this world! I've done about 9 prints so far and not a single failure. I can't believe the price! Sure, the print bed is a bit smaller, but it's SO MUCH FUN!!!

PROS: Sturdy design
Very "cool" looking
Takes up little desk space
Takes any brand PLA or ABS filament
VERY quiet
Easy to operate
Color screen
Pre calibrated bed

CONS: The only thing I have an issue with is the wheel used to select items from the menu. I have large hands and I have a hard time getting it to spin. Also, the select box is sometimes hard to make out. Otherwise, perfection!!!