Review on Anet ET4 Pro 3D Printer by Vincent Blitz

First off, I've been using 3D printers for a number of years and have built and used many of them. There are certainly some good things about this printer, but overall I can't recommend it, ESPECIALLY for a new person about to jump into "10 minute setup, just 6 screws" as they will have you believe. The instructions are terrible. . There are a few words, just a few pictures so small and certainly no guidance on how you should do what they ask you to do. Without my experience with 3D printers, it would have taken much longer to assemble. Because it took me 2-3 hours to do it. Far from 10 minutes. There are also about 16 screws, not 6, and lots of other parts to assemble as well. Some of the other brand devices I've bought were literally 6 screws and 2 main pieces that snap together in about 10 minutes, but not this brand. Still easier than the old DIYs, but a far cry from what they claim in the description. After setting it up and printing, everything seemed to be working pretty well. It printed well out of the box and I quickly forgot about setup issues. Unfortunately, this didn't last long. After a day of use, I replaced the filament through the OSD and it worked. I haven't tried printing yet. Then it just stopped and said I need to download the thread. I've already done this but thought the sensor might be bad so I cleaned the sensor, checked the connection and unloaded and reloaded the filament. The same thing. did it 6 TIMES! I even tried turning the machine off for a few hours. The same thing. I can't print anything at all as it keeps saying I need to load a filament. Hoping I could flash the board with firmware to reset the machine I went to their website and there is no firmware download available for this machine. Anet ET4 only, not the X version. It is expressly advised NOT to use the ET4 firmware on ET4X. I bought this to add to my many machines and JGMaker/JGAurora was out of stock (my machine transition) so I gave those a try. I will return it and stop using ANET. Unfortunately this is the second ANET I've bought (various models) and neither of them managed to last more than a few days without serious problems.