I currently run a Voxelab Aquila I got for $120 three years ago. It largely replaced a Monoprice Mini, and the Aquila’s done some surprisingly good work for me, but I may look for something new to put on the ol’ birthday list. I would like a flat bed and some modern QoL improvements built in (he said, side-eyeing the BLTouch clone he never installed), but I’m still looking to play in the shallow-end, price-wise, and anyway Bambu just has “future enshittification” written all over it. I don’t do anything time-sensitive, and I’m not afraid to put the whole thing together, so who are the current leaders in the value space? Recent machines from Creality?
I would only do a Prusa if you want a tool that just works and will work in the future. I don't regret my MK3 at all. I do regret a little KP3 Kingroon. I just never use it. It is cheap and a decent deal in a budget printer. The thing is, the whole hardware spec mindset and budget printers are not a path to the same place or end game. Everyone I know that buys a bottom tier printer, sticks with it, and actually prints owns several budget printers. Almost everyone that talks about how great one is, spends a bunch of time fiddling with it and almost always has several of these machines, of which one is ever working.
I got the Prusa first, and only got the Kingroon to try out klipper, modding, and determine if I wanted to build a Voron. A Voron 2.4 is great for a machine designed specifically for ABS. I know ABS extremely well from all of my years painting cars when almost all trim parts and bumper covers are made of the stuff. At one point, I considered making prototype and rare automotive parts using a Voron 2.4. If you do not know, the 2.4 has a totally stationary bed, and a core x/y like print head that moves inside a rigid cube. The actual print head rises with each layer, unlike a Core X/Y where the bed is lowered with each layer. This keeps the air around the print as still as possible which is absolutely critical for large ABS prints that have thickness variations in the walls and thin structures. Even in a good heated temperature controlled enclosure most printers struggle with this kind of print. I’ve made many iterations of tuned wall thicknesses to make large ABS prints work on my MK3 in a totally sealed enclosure.
This is my point, if you’re going to buy a project printer, buy one that is for some special niche. I spent most of my life learning this lesson the hard way: “there is nothing more expensive than being cheap/poor.” Buying anything twice costs more than doing it right the first time, and the physical cost neglects all of your time as worthless. There is a major fallacy in the assumption that hardware specifications count for anything of value. Unless you are an embedded hardware developer that somehow does not value your time, the hardware specifications are an irrelevant joke. The level of development that has gone into dialing a setup as well as a (well aged) Prusa is not trivial. You can’t just roll a marlin config and get comparable results. This software blind spot almost always results in the person playing with a perpetual printer project instead of a tool they actually use for useful stuff. That is a perfectly acceptable hobby if that is what you are looking for. My advice is that I do not regret buying the tool first and having something that will just work for the rest of your life. If you want a printer project, that is what you get for your second machine.
I will second this, even though I also agreed with “build a Voron”. My 2.4 is a massively capable printer, and has a lot of quality of life features like actual mechanical bed leveling, but odds are your first build will have some teething issues. My extruder motor didn’t have a fully aeat wire terminal in its factory harness so it extruded inconsistently. Thankfully it was easy to find and fix. I’ve had a few wire breaks in my cable chains because I didn’t leave enough slack in the runs. The build itself is also long, but I did find it to be straightforward. Vorons are also Vorons, so the modding is endless.
Printer as a tool? Prusa. Maybe also Voron, especially if you want print volume/raw speed/quality of life. Printer as a tinkering device? Voron. Ship of theseus as you upgrade your way to a better printer? Ender.