Five questions that narrow the field faster than any spec sheet.
FDM machines melt plastic filament. They are cheap to run, safe on a desk, and right for functional parts, enclosures, brackets and toys. Resin (MSLA) printers cure liquid photopolymer and reach detail FDM cannot touch — but the resin is an irritant, the workflow needs gloves, ventilation, isopropyl alcohol and a UV curing step, and parts are more brittle. Buy resin only if you are printing miniatures, dental or jewellery-scale detail.
PLA and PETG print fine in the open air. ABS, ASA, polycarbonate and most carbon-filled filaments warp and delaminate without a warm, still chamber — and ABS in particular emits fumes you do not want in a bedroom. If engineering materials or outdoor parts are on your list, an enclosed printer is not optional.
Most people over-buy build volume. A 220 mm cube covers the overwhelming majority of hobby printing, and parts can be split and bonded. Height is the dimension people run out of first — check Z, not just the bed.
Four-colour systems print one colour at a time and purge the nozzle at every change, so a colourful model can burn more filament in waste than in the part itself and take several times as long. It is fantastic for display models and signage, and largely pointless for functional parts. Dual-nozzle machines avoid most of the waste and are the better route to soluble supports.
Closed ecosystems (Bambu Lab) get you printing in fifteen minutes with almost no tuning, at the cost of proprietary parts and a cloud-leaning workflow. Open machines (Prusa, Sovol, anything Klipper) hand you full control, root access and a decade of spare parts, and expect more of you in return. Neither answer is wrong — but pick deliberately, because it shapes the next three years of ownership.