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.
IME consistency across batches is almost the most important thing. Some brands print better than others, but none is best across all types. I have 3-4 different brands that I have dialed in and trust to perform the same every time and I stick to those. Buying cheap aliexpress filament is a crapshoot every time, even when sticking to the same brand. Sometimes it works well, sometimes it shortens your life by a decade due to frustration.
Okay, thanks. That makes sense. I’ll see what info I can get on the various AliExpress brands, read reviews and so on.
IMO life is just too short for bad filament, I’d rather pay 5-10$ more for a roll of filament and know that I’m not going to be spending hours and 1/3 of the spool on debugging and failed prints.