Ender printers are good if you want your hobby to revolve around “constantly tweaking and managing and redesigning the printer”. A bit of a hot take maybe, and I’m not just throwing shade, some people legitimately enjoy that aspect of the hobby. It’s a fun printer to tinker with, low stakes, and sometimes the challenge of getting perfect prints out of the cheapest jankiest available 3d printer is a goal unto itself and developing that skill can be very rewarding and educational. But if your goal is to actually reliably and repeatedly print 3d objects in a variety of filaments, in my experience the Ender is an aggravating and limited waste of space.

Personally, I want the 3d printer to mostly “just work” and I enjoy the part design and 3d modelling and then actually seeing how those parts perform in real life, and for that, I want something that is reliable and easy and works across a broad range of parts and filaments with very little effort needed on my part.

I spent the moderate number of bucks required to buy a Prusa MK3S, which is just as open and expandable and tweakable as the Ender, the difference is you don’t have to. The options are all there, but as designed, out of the box, it just works. It prints, without any significant errors or issues almost every time, it’s not a constant fight to get a single thing printed. It’s a well designed machine, the company stands behind it and provides everything you need to upgrade it and there’s a huge community building addons if you want them. But you don’t need them. And that’s the nice part.

I personally have a Bambu A1, but in hindsight I would not recommend Bambu’s printers, since they are going the Apple route of locking down their ecosystems, blocking things like third-party slicers and accessories. Not very nice of them. My A1 will be perpetually stuck on firmware v4.0.0.0 for this reason as I prefer using OrcaSlicer over Bambu Studio. There is no reason why they should block OrcaSlicer, it’s a fork of Bambu Studio (which itself is a fork of PrusaSlicer, rules for thee not for me?)

The Creality Ender 3 seems to be the most recommended budget beginner printer. I have never owned one myself, but I have used one before in school, and the print quality is great. No idea how difficult it is to maintain though.

If you can stretch your budget a bit, you might also want to look at printers from other brands (Sovol, Qidi, possibly used Prusas, and the new Elegoo Centauri Carbon + non-carbon).

I know your budget us $300ish but I’d try to get your hands on a prusa. Used mk3’s might be near that price point. But the mk4 prints so much faster.

The entire prusa ecosystem is awesome, almost every part is printable or easily replaced.

If you want to tinker with it (probably quite a bit until you get it nicely tuned), the Ender 3 pro for $75 is a good deal. I’ve got one, and with some minor upgrades (raspberry pi running Klipper+Mainsail and a bed leveling sensor) it’s been great. I saw you mentioned using Linux and tinkering with that, so you’d probably be able to get things working well.

After you’ve got a bit of experience, I definitely recommend connecting it to a Pi or other computer to run some kind of web interface for printing, it’s much nicer than messing with an SD card every time. Klipper (firmware alternative!) isn’t too hard to set up (I’m using Mainsail as the UI) and it’s been great. Before that I had Octoprint with the stock firmware which was super easy to set up but more limited.

If you want to just plug it in and have it work perfectly right away, I’ve heard Bambu labs is best for that, but they’re much more walled garden than other brands.

I would do everything you can to avoid a second-hand (or otherwise used) printer as your first go - you have no idea what’s been done to it.

I started on an FLSUN Q5 and it was a great machine to learn on, but a little small build area. I don’t think they sell it anymore though, and their “entry level” printer is now the SR, which I think is around (or more than) double what the Q5 used to go for.

Not knowing what budget you are looking at makes it hard to make recommendations. Look for something with automatic bed levelling at a minimum. If your budget only allows the Ender 3 price point, keep an eye on Micro Center if you have them in your area, as they regularly have sales on them. I haven’t been paying attention lately, but they used to go for $99.99 every few months.

Ender 3 pros are about as entry level as you can get. $75 is a good price for one, but honestly I do recommend getting a nice one if you know 3d printing is gonna be something you enjoy. If you just want to print an occasional part and don’t mind tinkering, an ender 3 pro will get it done.

I had an Ender 3 V2 and it was nothing but headache after another. Lots of tinkering to get it printing something and I was never satisfied with the result. At the end I just gave up 3d-printing for years.

Got myself Elegoo Centauri Carbon a month or so ago (350€ shipped to home) and it has been a dream. I can just throw stls into that machine and they come out great! Save yourself the trouble and get a proper 3d-printer. Look up reviews of the Elegoo CC and decide yourself.

For me the tinkering is part of the fun, so old beat up ender 3s are perfect. If you want something ready to go, even a brand new ender 3 won’t give you that 🤣

You first have to determine what you want.

• Do you primarily want to print or do you want to tinker? An Ender 3 is not an out-of-the-box printer, especially not an used one where you have no idea what the last owner did to it. So if you want to tinker, that’s ok.
• Do you want great quality or a great price? An Ender 3 is quite outdated and compared to newer devices the quality isn’t great. If you are ok with that, it might be ok for you.
• Do you want a fast printer? An Ender 3 is slow by modern standards. It prints around 60mm/s stock and you might be able to get it to 100mm/s, maybe 120, but quality will suffer hard. Most modern printers do around 300mm/s stock and can be pushed to 600-700mm/s. This can reduce print times from 5h to maybe half an hour.
• Just to double check: are you ok with buying a potentially abused device with worn-down components that might cause hard to debug and costly to fix problems as your first printer?

If all that fits for you, then the Ender 3 will be good for you.

If it doesn’t, spend €200 and get a Bambulab A1 Mini.

For around $300, there are some newer models that are significantly better than an Ender 3. The Elegoo Centauri Carbon has been getting good reviews. I started with an Ender 3 V2, spent much of my time dealing with bed adhesion issues, then moved on to a Sovol SV06 which has a lot fewer issues and in some scenarios printed better than the Prusa MK4Ss I have at work. I recently upgraded to a Prusa CORE One, which is great, but I wouldn’t recommend spending the money if you don’t think you’re going to print much.

Just got a sovol sv06 ace and it was very easy to set it up and get going. Had it printing like two hours after I got the package. Also has a wifi card which is nice for CADing up something on your computer and sending it over to the printer.

Had a slight issue with it throwing a fan exception after starting a print but a firmware update seems to have solved the problem.

First you must answer the most important question:

Do you want working on your 3D printer as a hobby or 3d printing as a hobby? Both are perfectly valid, it’s just about personal preference.

FWIW, I bought a new Ender3 as a kit not too long ago, it was $150 IIRC. And by being forced to assemble it, I learned a good bit too. It might be worthwhile to watch their store & see if they put it up for sale again.

The only upgrade I’ve done that I really felt made a difference was buying an enclosure for it. Nothing fancy, it’s a fireproof bag over an aluminum frame. Even more than controlling the temperature, it also keeps it dust free when not in use - that’s probably the biggest win for me.

As for buying the used one - these things do wear down. Start by checking the feed gear & the PTFE tube. If the filament feeds well, then also check the belts, rollers, & nozzle. Those are really the common wear items imo. Perhaps obvious, but make sure the seller gives you a copy of the slicing software (should be free on their webpage) and also the little USB-A to Sim card doo-hickey that you need to move files back & forth.

What budget and how much time are you willing to tinker with it?

Fume hood and exhaust system.