First-generation product — recently released, still early days
Black Friday — Snapmaker's US store lists the U1 at $699, $200 below its $899 retail price and below the $721.65 Prime Day 2026 deal. Snapmaker also offers a free gift and a 30-day price guarantee. Stock was showing as unavailable at the time of writing, so check Amazon US too.
Key strengths
Each filament has its own preheated hotend, and swaps take about 5 seconds. Multicolor prints skip the purge tower and filament waste of single-nozzle switching systems.
Separate hotends mean PLA with PVA or breakaway supports, or rigid PLA with TPU, in one print. Single-nozzle multicolor systems handle these combinations poorly.
Snapmaker has published its Klipper, Moonraker and Fluidd forks on GitHub, and Snapmaker Orca is built on Orca Slicer. There is already an active community firmware project. RFID filament recognition stays proprietary.
The Snapmaker U1 is a CoreXY tool changer with four independent, preheated toolheads. Each color or material has its own hotend, so a swap takes about 5 seconds and there is almost no purging. That makes multicolor prints much faster and far less wasteful than single-nozzle filament-switching systems. It has a 270×270×270 mm build volume, a 500 mm/s top speed, 300°C hotends and a 100°C bed. Calibration is automatic: XYZ offsets between toolheads (to within 0.04 mm), mesh bed leveling, input shaping and pressure advance. Snapmaker launched the U1 on Kickstarter in 2025 and it went on general retail sale on 10 April 2026 at $899. The US store currently lists it at $699 for Black Friday, but the base unit was showing as unavailable there at the time of writing. The U1 has an open frame. ABS, ASA, PA and PC need the optional $149 Top Cover, and fibre-filled filaments also need hardened steel hotends. Snapmaker has published its Klipper, Moonraker and Fluidd forks on GitHub, and Snapmaker Orca is based on Orca Slicer.
Buy now if you can get it at the $699 Black Friday price. That is the lowest US price so far, $200 below the $899 retail price, and the U1 has been shipping since April 2026, so early hardware problems have had time to surface. If the $699 offer sells out or ends, wait. The U1 was $721.65 on Amazon Prime Day 2026, so a similar deal is likely again.
Both avoid single-nozzle purging, but in different ways. The U1 has four complete, independent toolheads. The K3 ($849) swaps four nozzles using Creality's KliTek system. The U1 has a slightly larger build volume (270 mm vs 260 mm cube), Klipper-based open firmware and a track record since April 2026. The K3 is newer and only starts shipping in December 2026. Both have open frames and need an optional top cover for ABS and ASA. At $699 the U1 is the safer buy.
The P2S is fully enclosed and has Bambu's polished software and AMS ecosystem. However, AMS multicolor purges filament at every color change, which wastes filament and time on prints with many swaps. The U1 swaps whole toolheads in about 5 seconds with almost no waste, and handles mixed materials such as PLA with PVA supports or TPU much better. For engineering filaments straight out of the box, the P2S. For frequent multicolor and multi-material printing, the U1.
No, the U1 ships with an open frame. Out of the box, Snapmaker lists PLA, PETG, PCTG, TPU and PVA. The optional Top Cover ($149, currently on pre-order) adds PET, ABS, ASA, PA and PC. Carbon- and glass-fibre-filled filaments also need hardened steel hotends. If you mainly print ABS or ASA, budget for the Top Cover or consider an enclosed printer.
Not with separate hotends. The U1 has four toolheads, one per filament, and cannot add more. You can change filaments mid-print with a pause, but tool-changer prints are limited to four colors or materials at once.
Mostly. Snapmaker has published its Klipper, Moonraker and Fluidd forks on GitHub, and Snapmaker Orca is based on the open-source Orca Slicer. Some features are separate closed modules, including flow-rate auto-calibration and defect detection, and RFID filament recognition is proprietary. An independent community firmware project (SnapmakerU1-Extended-Firmware) adds features such as SSH access.