ANYCUBIC
KOBRA S1 COMBO

Here is the thing about multi-color printing systems: they all share the same weakness, and nobody talks about it. The Bambu AMS holds 4 spools in an unsealed enclosure. The Creality CFS is similarly exposed. During a 10-hour multi-color print, nylon absorbs 0.5-1% moisture from ambient air. PETG absorbs less but still enough to produce bubbling and stringing by hour 6. TPU — the flexible filament used for phone cases and grips — becomes sticky and jammy after extended exposure. Every multi-color system treats this as a user problem: "dry your filament before printing." The ACE Pro treats it as an engineering problem and solves it at the hardware level.

The built-in dryer maintains the filament at an elevated temperature inside the ACE Pro enclosure, continuously evaporating absorbed moisture while the spool feeds to the printer. On a 12-hour nylon print, the ACE Pro delivers the same extrusion quality at hour 12 as hour 1. On a Bambu AMS, nylon quality visibly degrades after hour 4-5 unless you pre-dried the spool for 6+ hours in a dedicated dryer. This is a genuine innovation that solves a real problem — 97 reviewers confirmed the dryer claim, and the feature was specifically praised by users printing with hygroscopic materials. For a detailed comparison of multi-color systems, see our AMS vs CFS vs IFS guide.

One reviewer bought the Kobra S1 Combo as a "backup printer" while their Bambu P1S was being repaired — and was surprised by the quality. "The S1 is way better than expected, no fine-tuning required, works out of the box and the quality, oh boy, the best I've seen so far!" That surprise sentiment appears repeatedly: 19 surprise mentions in the mining data, with 10 positive surprises noting performance that exceeded expectations based on brand reputation. Anycubic is not perceived as a premium brand, and the Kobra S1 outperforms those expectations.

After several weeks of use, the experience diverges. The 488 enthusiasts settle into productive printing — the CoreXY motion system at 600mm/s with 20,000mm/s² acceleration matches the K2 Plus Combo and the K2 SE on speed benchmarks, and the 250mm cube build volume handles most projects without size limitations. The 53 critics, though, report problems that emerge over time: "after" appears in 23% of critic reviews, suggesting failures that manifest days or weeks into ownership rather than on first use. One reviewer described extruder failure after 18 hours of printing across six prints — a reliability window that initial setup testing would not catch.

The slicer situation is the Kobra S1's biggest liability. Anycubic Slicer Next — a fork of OrcaSlicer — handles single-color prints well but struggles with multi-color purge calculations. Purge towers are sometimes oversized (wasting filament) and sometimes undersized (causing color contamination). The workaround is switching to OrcaSlicer itself, which provides more reliable multi-color support. This is a software problem, not a hardware problem — and software is fixable. Anycubic has been pushing firmware and slicer updates, but the gap between Anycubic's software and Bambu Studio's polish is the widest in the market at this price point.

Switching from a Bambu AMS setup to the ACE Pro, the most immediately noticeable difference is the warmth radiating from the ACE Pro housing. The unit runs perceptibly warm to the touch — not hot, but warm enough that you can feel the dryer operating through the enclosure panels. The Bambu AMS is room temperature at all times because it has no heating element. For users who have dealt with failed nylon prints from moisture absorption, that warmth is reassuring — tangible evidence that the dryer is doing its job. The ACE Pro's internal temperature display confirms the chamber is maintaining 50°C, but the physical warmth of the housing is the first sensory clue that this system works differently from its competitors.

One common mistake new Kobra S1 owners make: running the built-in dryer at maximum temperature with PLA. PLA's glass transition temperature is 55-60°C — the ACE Pro at 55°C can soften PLA enough to cause feeding issues where the filament deforms in the Bowden tube. The solution is lowering the dryer temperature to 40°C for PLA (which only needs mild drying) and reserving 50-55°C for nylon and TPU. This is not documented in the Anycubic manual and catches users who assume maximum drying temperature is always optimal. PETG at 45°C and ABS at 50°C work without issues.

The claim verification data tells an interesting story about this machine's maturity. All 5 marketing claims were confirmed, but the contradiction rates are the highest in our database: 25% contradiction on the multi-color claim (42 out of 207 mentions), 27% on the dryer claim (26 out of 123), and 30% on the speed claim (21 out of 92). Compare that to the Bambu A1 Mini where contradiction rates run 2-5%. The Kobra S1 works well for the majority but has a wider band of failure cases than mature competitors. This gap is closing — newer firmware has addressed many early complaints — but as of early 2026, the system demands more patience from its owner than a Bambu product does.

The enclosed build chamber adds passive heating benefits similar to the Centauri Carbon — the bed and motor heat raise chamber temperature above ambient, helping with ABS adhesion. The Kobra S1 does not have active chamber heating like the Prusa Core One, but the combination of passive chamber heat and active filament drying in the ACE Pro provides a functional workaround for engineering materials. Nylon prints on the Kobra S1 with ACE Pro drying are more reliable than nylon on a Bambu P1S with an AMS (no drying) — the filament arrives at the nozzle dry regardless of ambient humidity, which matters more than chamber temperature for nylon layer adhesion. Our filament storage guide covers the hygroscopic behavior of different materials in depth.