Elegoo’s newest 3D printer has restored my faith in the brand. The Centauri Carbon is a very affordable, fully enclosed Core XY speedster, debuting with a sale price of $299.99.

The Centauri Carbon is giving customers what they want: an affordable and fast printer with a fully enclosed chamber. The 256mm cubed build volume is the same size as a Bambu P1S, the spool holder is pleasantly located on the side, and a UBS port is placed right in front. The machine doesn’t require cloud access, which means you can control your own data security.

Elegoo finally sorted out their issues with Klipper – the Centauri is running an Elegoo fork – and banished the bed leveling issues I saw with the Neptune 4 Max and the Orange Storm Giga.

This is easily one of the best 3D printers you can buy and our pick for the fastest affordable printer of 2025.

Specifications: Elegoo Centauri Carbon

Elegoo Centauri Carbon: Included in the Box

The Elegoo Centauri Carbon comes with everything you need to get your printer set up. You get tools to maintain the printer, a printable scraper blade, a glue stick, and a USB stick. There’s also a small sample coil of white PLA to start your printing journey.

The printer comes with a copy of the manual, a copy of Elegoo Slicer, and several presliced sample models.

Design of the Elegoo Centauri Carbon

The Elegoo Centauri Carbon is a fully-enclosed, fast Core XY printer. It has an all-metal build with darkly tinted glass on the door and lid, which makes it hard to see through. The interior light is abysmally dim and probably my least favorite feature.

It has a filament cutter in the toolhead, a brush for wiping the nozzle, and a “poop chute” on the back, making a color upgrade a distinct possibility.

Its build plate is 256 x 256mm with a 256mm build height, the same size as Bambu Lab Core XY machines. It also has a standard, double-sided flex plate, which doesn’t need glue for ordinary materials like PLA. The textured side worked well, but the smooth “cool” plate side has a disappointingly weak grip at the suggested 30℃ temperature. It worked much better at a normal 60℃.

The lid is completely removable to provide airflow for PLA, PETG, and TPU. At 20℃ ambient, the chamber thermometer averaged 31℃ while printing with the lid off and the door closed. Opening the door dropped the temperature to an average of 27℃. I should note that the door opens at approximately 110℃ and has nicely dampened hinges that stay put. The door closes securely with a magnetic latch, and both the door and top panel have seals to prevent air leakage.

The printer has a built-in camera for monitoring prints and doing timelapses. The camera feed pops up immediately when you access the Klipper interface, though it is dimly lit. Leaving the lid off and the door open allows more light for a better image, but of course that won’t work for ABS or ASA.

Elegoo runs a fork of Klipper-based firmware with Fluidd as the web interface. The Centauri Carbon is easily accessible over LAN by entering the assigned IP address into your web browser, with no need for cloud-based nonsense. Some of the previous Elegoo FDM machines suffered from inconsistent bed leveling caused by buggy firmware. This has been solved with the Centauri Carbon. Initially we did need to adjust the Z offset by a few tenths of a millimeter, but the change was saved by the firmware and has not required any further tweaking.

The heated bed on the Centauri Carbon runs on full mains power. At 110V, it took just over 7 minutes to heat the bed from 32℃ ambient to 110℃.

The hotend is similar to the Neptune 4 Plus and 4 Max with a Bambu style heater and thermistor clipped to the side and high-flow, proprietary brass nozzle screwed into the bottom. The nozzle can be swapped for a hardened steel available from Elegoo’s website.

One knock against the Centauri Carbon is the lack of a chamber heater, a feature we fell in love with on the Qidi Q1 Pro and hope to see more often. The enclosure does an excellent job of eliminating drafts, and after 20 minutes of printing did reach a toasty 41℃. This was sufficient to print ABS and some finicky Prusa PC Blend filament nicely.

The UI for the touchscreen is nicely intuitive, with minimal digging needed to access everything needed. The onboard memory stores recently printed files with an icon showing a graphic of the file.

Assembling the Elegoo Centauri Carbon

The Elegoo Centauri Carbon is almost completely assembled and only needs to be unboxed and unpacked. You’ll need to remove all the packing foam, unscrew the three screws securing the bed, and attach the touch screen and filament holder. When turned on, the screen reminds you to remove all the packing materials before calibration.

Leveling the Elegoo Centauri Carbon

The Elegoo Centauri Carbon has a full auto leveling program that includes setting the Z height, and input shaping. It runs a full calibration during the device self-check. The machine also runs through an optional leveling calibration before each print.

Loading Filament on the Elegoo Centauri Carbon

The filament unloading routine is simple. Place the spool on the spindle and feed the material through the Bowden tube. There’s a serious bend near the tool head that requires a little extra force to get through. Once the filament is pushed in as far as it will go, push the load button in the menu.

For TPU, you must pop the Bowden tube off the extruder and gently hand-feed it the last few centimeters.

To unload, reverse the process.

Preparing Files / Software for Elegoo Centauri Carbon

The Centauri comes with a copy of ElegooSlicer, a custom program is based off Bambu Studio and OrcaSlicer. The program will look very familiar to anyone coming from those fan bases. The default profiles worked great after adjusting the generic filament settings.

Printing on the Elegoo Centauri Carbon

The Elegoo Centauri Carbon comes with a small sample coil of white PLA. If you want more colors and materials like silks and multicolor filaments, you should check out our guide to the best filaments for 3D printing for suggestions.

I ran a Benchy using “speed benchy” rules: 0.25mm layer height, two walls, three top & bottom layers, 10% infill. I bumped up the acceleration and speed and got a near perfect 18-minute and 19-second speed boat, which is quite respectable. This is run in Printed Solid Jessie MixTape 17, an experimental grey PLA from the subscription box service.

I wanted to show off this Loubie Aria the Dragon, printed in Polymaker Shadow Red PLA. I used default settings with a .2mm layer height and .4mm line width. There’s no stringing, the layers have melted away and details are super crisp. This printed in one hour and 10 minutes.

For PETG, I printed a Flog Planter in Olive Green transparent petg from Bambu Lab. This print took four hours and 27 minutes to print using a .2mm layer height and .4mm line width, and the Centauri’s default PETG settings. The color may not be the best choice, but the layer lines have completely vanished, producing a nice clean print.

For TPU I printed the Taco Bell Bag at 75% in Fiberlogy FiberFlex TPU. I used a super chonky vase mode setting I’ve been working on, which produces much stronger vase mode prints. This looks very good with smooth, well stacked .32mm layers and a .6mm line width. I slowed the volumetric flow to 12mm/s³, which is actually quite fast for TPU, and increased the heat to 230℃. The bag printed in just one hour and seven minutes.

To test out the enclosure, I printed some tricky Death Racer parts for my RC car that we’ll take to festivals this summer. Here’s a sample of gears and one of the frames, printed in strong Prusament PC Blend. This filament is annoying to print and prone to warping and despite letting the chamber heat up, using a 100℃ on the bed, the frame still lifted at the corners, but it’s usable. The parts are very strong, and the gears are cleanly printed, which is what matters for a functional print.

Bottom Line

Currently on sale for $299.99, the Elegoo Centauri Carbon is going to give Prusa and Bambu a run for their money. This is Elegoo’s first CORE XY machine, so we have no idea how well it will hold up in the long run or what kind of maintenance issues it could run into. However, for $300, it’s certainly worth the gamble.

The machine could use better lighting, but runs very well and produces excellent prints. It’s got a good design – the side mounted spoon holder and USB port right up front makes the machine so much easier to operate on a daily basis. I’m also appreciating that Elegoo is keeping this one off the Cloud with basic Klipper Wi-Fi access. Newbies might want to run a printer from their phone, but print farms, schools and businesses need machines that are simple to use and secure.

If you’re looking for a printer that has an enclosure and full color printing capabilities, check out Bambu Lab’s P1S, on sale for $829 with a four color AMS unit. If you’re interested in long-lasting quality from a company that guarantees future upgrades, then check out Prusa’s new CORE One, now available as a DIY kit for $949 or an MK4S upgrade for $450.

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Denise Bertacchi is a Contributing Writer for Tom’s Hardware US, covering 3D printing. Denise has been crafting with PCs since she discovered Print Shop had clip art on her Apple IIe. She’s been a freelance newspaper reporter, online columnist and craft blogger with an eye for kid’s STEM activities. She got hooked on 3D printing after her son made a tiny Tinkercad Jeep for a school science project. Excited to learn more, she got a Creality CR10s and hasn’t looked back. She loves reviewing 3D printers because she can mix all her passions: printing, photography and writing. When she’s not modding her Ender 3 Pro or stirring glitter into a batch of resin, you’ll find her at the latest superhero movie with her husband and two sons.