Bambu Lab P2S First Impressions

Two Weeks With the P2S — No Holding Back

I’ve been running Bambu Lab printers in production since the X1C dropped. Between ADP Industries and my work at Slice Engineering, I’ve pushed these machines harder than most people ever will. So when the P2S landed on my bench, I didn’t bother with a benchy — I threw it straight into a 72-hour PA6-CF print queue.

Here’s where things stand after two solid weeks.

Build Quality and First Setup

Out of the box, the P2S feels like a genuine step up from the P1S. The frame rigidity is noticeably improved — less flex during high-speed cornering, which matters when you’re pushing 300mm/s on infill. The toolhead redesign is the biggest physical change, and it shows in the print quality immediately.

Setup took about 20 minutes. If you’ve touched any Bambu printer before, you know the drill: unbox, remove shipping brackets, load filament, run auto-calibration. The new calibration routine is faster and more accurate than previous generations. My first print came off the plate with dimensional accuracy within 0.05mm on XY — that’s production-grade out of the box.

Print Quality at Speed

This is where the P2S earns its keep. I ran my standard test suite:

PLA speed run: 20-minute benchy equivalent at 250mm/s — clean, minimal ringing
ABS functional parts: Enclosure clips and mounts at 180mm/s with 0.2mm layers — excellent layer adhesion
PA6-CF structural: Drone arm prototypes at 120mm/s — the new hotend handles CF filaments without the nozzle wear I expected
TPU 95A: Quad motor soft mounts at 80mm/s — the direct drive handles flex materials better than the P1S ever did

The input shaper tuning is noticeably better calibrated from factory. I usually spend 30 minutes fine-tuning resonance compensation on a new printer. The P2S needed maybe 5 minutes of tweaking.

The AMS Situation

If you’re running an AMS with the P2S, the filament feeding is smoother. The buffer system redesign actually works now. On the P1S, I had maybe a 3% failure rate on AMS filament changes during long multi-material prints. On the P2S, I’m sitting at under 0.5% after roughly 200 material changes. That’s a meaningful improvement for production use.

The RFID tag reading is also faster and more reliable. Small thing, but when you’re managing 16+ spools across four AMS units, it adds up.

What Needs Work

No printer is perfect, and the P2S has a few rough edges:

The cooling fan profile for PETG is too aggressive by default. My first PETG print had layer splitting because the part cooling was running at 80% where 40% would have been correct. Easy fix in the slicer, but a bad default for beginners.
Wi-Fi connectivity still drops intermittently on my network. This has been a Bambu issue since the X1C, and it’s frustrating that it’s not resolved. I run everything over ethernet anyway, but most people won’t.
The bed surface is improved but still not perfect for PA/Nylon without glue stick or a textured PEI sheet swap. For a printer at this price point targeting prosumers, I’d like to see better stock adhesion for engineering materials.

The Bottom Line

The P2S is the best sub-$700 printer I’ve used for production work. It’s not revolutionary over the P1S — it’s evolutionary. But those evolutions matter when you’re running 16+ hour print jobs daily. The improved frame rigidity, better toolhead, and more reliable AMS integration make it a legitimate production machine.

If you’re running a P1S and it’s working fine, there’s no urgent reason to upgrade. But if you’re buying new or scaling up your print farm, the P2S is the move.

I’ll follow up with a detailed PA6-CF tuning guide specific to the P2S once I’ve dialed in my profiles. Stay tuned.

Full disclosure: The Amazon links above are affiliate links. I bought this printer with my own money — nobody sent me anything for free. If you use the links, it helps support the content at no extra cost to you.