The Artillery Genius was my very first 3D printer, and the one that spoiled me the most. A few months in, in February 2021, I asked myself: is it still the best purchase for a beginner? My answer was yes.
Ten-minute assembly
Unboxing and assembly took literally ten minutes. You get three main pieces: the bed, the Z/X gantry already assembled, and the spool holder. Four screws from underneath, a few plugs, and you're almost done. The spool holder has a knob to adjust for different spool widths. I still had to print an adapter for my 300 g sample spools.
The build volume is 220 × 220 × 250 mm, a bit smaller than its big sister, the Sidewinder X1, but I never found it too small for a desktop setup.
What's inside
The Genius has a direct drive extruder with a Volcano nozzle, so it handles PLA, PETG and ABS. It's super silent: the only thing you hear is the little fan kicking in. You could sleep a couple of metres away. All the prints in this video are at 0.2 mm layers and the precision is impressive.
The heated glass bed (Ultrabase-style) holds PLA well at 60 °C. For PETG I needed 80 °C and a lower fan speed. Levelling is easy with four large knobs. I did it a couple of times at the beginning and then it stayed put for a long time. There's a beautiful colour touchscreen, USB and microSD for G-code, and a filament runout sensor: I tested it by cutting the filament, and it beeps and pauses so you can reload.
At the time I found it on Banggood for 229 to 289 euros, sometimes as low as 209. For what you get, it felt like a medium-high level printer.
My first months of prints
I chose it partly because of the huge Italian Facebook support group, though I never actually needed help. My only problem was my own fault: as a "virgin maker" I tried printing PETG at PLA temperature and partially clogged it. That's how you learn.
From the very first Artillery test cube (which I now realise was perfectly tuned out of the box), to a Baby Yoda as my third print ever, a Benchy, a maze puzzle, and a print-in-place flexible "fabric", the results blew my mind. Every filament review on my channel up to then was printed on the Genius, including AzureFilm's wood PLA. In PETG I printed a chip clip, a nutcracker and a huge container. My favourite is a lamp I found on Thingiverse and modified in Tinkercad for a wire that had been hanging from our wall for ages. Everyone asks where we bought it.
My small upgrades
It works perfectly out of the box, but I added a few functional prints: a GoPro holder (my first Tinkercad design, uploaded to Thingiverse), the spool-holder adapter, arms for an LED light, a side GoPro mount, and most importantly a bed cable strain relief. Many owners report the bed cable detaching, so print the right version for your Genius revision.