Hi, all. So I’m pretty new to this hobby, and this might seem like a short-sighted question. But I was wondering, how important is the brand name when buying filament? I live in South Korea, which means AliExpress orders arrive here pretty quickly and are generally a viable option. The thing is that I see filament on Ali for half the price of the reputable brand name stuff I can get in Korea. Do any of you have any experience with the cheaper, no-name stuff? Is plastic just plastic, and the brand is just jacking up the price because they can? Or is there an important difference between the filament produced by the big brands and filament made in China that I can get for much cheaper? Any and all advice would be much appreciated.
Newer printers have flow rate sensors etc, that makes it much easier to just print what you have without spending much time dialing everything in.
Other than the quality of the plastic itself issues could be filament diameter and pigmentation, and spooling. Cheaper brands tend to have more variation and bad spooling.