I realize that this post sounds like I'm shilling for Kagi, so I'll say up front that I have no affiliation with them whatsoever. I'm just a satisfied customer. I’ll also fully admit that I don’t know much about the controversies or privacy issues other people are referencing. So look at others’ replies for that. I'll be doing my research about it too.
From a purely search perspective, I don’t really use their customizations. I don't need to. It far and away beats any competition in my experience. I’ve used it for over a year now, and will probably never switch off of it. Every month or two, when I have to use a different browser or machine that has DuckDuckGo, Startpage, or Brave, I get frustrated within a few minutes of searching. Maybe some self-hosted stuff can compete, but I haven't tried any of them for any length of time. Of the handful of people I've recommended it to IRL, they all switched over permanently.
But general praise isn’t worth anything without an explanation, so here is a long-winded one.
Lenses are awesome! Of the ones I use the most:
Forums is a much better version of appending "reddit" to a search.
PDFs comes in handy for me specifically. I read a lot of papers, and it is very good at skipping past annoying sign in, click through four buttons, and go through a captcha to get to the pdf.
Academic is a good supplement to Google Scholar. I still use scholar as my main search for academic sources since I don't want to miss any papers that other people will find. But Kagi often finds some relevant papers that don't appear high up Google Scholar.
The amount of AI slop, SEO-optimized articles on other search engines is just abhorrent. I'm not sure how they do it, but Kagi does an amazing job at cutting them out. I no longer fear searching for "best vacuums for hard floors" or whatever. The results that come up are actual good review sites (Consumer Reports, Rtings.com, specific websites dedicated to vacuum reviews) and sometimes useful Reddit posts. On other search engines (at least back when I switched to Kagi), I only got AI generated listicles of what are the first 10 results on Amazon with "reviews" that are just rewordings of the amazon descriptions.
I know AI in search is controversial, but I think the "Quick Answer" feature is done very tastefully. I do think there are searches where AI summaries can be helpful, efficient, and unlikely to be inaccurate. The button doesn't feel intrusive, and I'll end up clicking it about 1/10 searches.
I like the little shield on the right side that gives you an insight into how many ads/trackers a site has. It's another thing that can help you make better choices on which websites to go to. Not a huge thing, but I like it.
I'll admit this one is less precise, but I feel like search results are much closer to what I'm actually looking for. When I'm searching for something very specific, the results are exactly what I want, not tangential.
Summary: For my personal day-to-day searches, Kagi is a no-brainer. It make searching easy and frictionless again. It's what I'd expect a good search engine to be like in 2026. And I think it's worth paying for a service when it provides value, especially when you aren't the product.
My solution has been pennies. They're cheap and and easy to get. Since they are a fixed size, it's really easy to model a cavity for them in your slicer. You can also leave them in their rolls for bigger projects.
A friend of mine has a Qidi X-Max 3, so I got to play around with it quite a bit. It is a beast! And apparently their support is top notch. I'm definitely going to look at Qidi next time I'm in the market.
All that said, the Q1 is not the same class of printer as the X-Max 3. It seems like it makes some compromises to hit the price it does. If you are looking for amazing build quality or extremely large prints, you probably want to save up for something like their Plus4. But if you don't care about those things, or don't want to spend more, the Q1 seems like a great choice.
As far as the polydrier goes, it seems good, but expensive. I've had a good experience just using my printer's heatbed to dry filament and using vacuum bags with redried dessicants. The bags are like $1-2 each, so even if 1/4 of them are leaky, it's still way cheaper than dry boxes. And I just collect the dessicants from my new filament spools and redry them in the microwave.
I haven't printed nylon, but I know you can get the cereal box dryboxes for like $7 each. If you plan to have tons of rolls of nylon, then it may be worth getting a full drying system, but for only a few rolls, I'd stick to cereal boxes.
If I were in your situation, I'd cheap out on the storage and put that extra ~$100 towards a Plus4 or some cool filament.
That's a very fair point. I also think the massive amount of outrage shows that many people didn't know the full extent of what they were signing up for. So I think is varies from person to person.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Prusa specifically say you don't need to keep the CORE One doesn't need to be open because of its temperature control?
Been using it for about five years now. I absolutely love it. But I will say some of these comments make it sound like it's a little easier than it is. I'd say about 80% of your knowledge from Android will transfer over and just work. But the last 20% is a bit of a learning curve, and will take at least a few weeks to get the hang of.
What I recommended to some of my friends that switched is to get the phone and mess around with it for a few weeks before you switch your sim. Then you'll get the hang of things like alternative app stores and sandboxed play services, and you'll figure out what you can and can't do.
I will say the vast majority of things do work easily because of protection compatibility mode and sandboxed play services. But there will be some things that are just more hassle then they're worth. I find keeping a second device, like a tablet, without a custom ROM makes that stuff easier.
And there are some things that seem impossible to get working properly, at least for me. For example, casting to a TV is basically impossible from what I can tell. Also, tap to pay, even for things like tickets doesn't work (although if you have play services, you can use Google wallet for things with barcodes).
Overall, it's totally worth trying out. Just don't set your expectations too high. You're not getting a completely "just works" experience.
As for other custom ROMs, I've tried CalyxOS and LineageOS for MicroG. I didn't find either of them quite as good, but that was many years ago. Maybe they've gotten better.
I've been reading the other comments, and while people are encouraging, their comments seem a bit too "you HAVE to learn CAD." You definitely don't NEED to know CAD. I made basic parts and modifications in the slicer for nearly a year after I started printing, and it worked really well. However, if you are considering learning a full CAD program, I have two pieces of advice.
First pertains to if you are working with functional parts. Then you are talking about a parametric CAD program (fusion, onshape, FreeCAD, etc.). In this case, I think it's worth learning for you, and it's not as hard as it seems. You say you have SketchUp experience, so I'm assuming you have decent spatial reasoning. I know someone with no tech literacy nor programming experience who learned a CAD program very well in less than a month of following tutorials in her free time. Just give it a try, and it's a skill you'll be happy to have.
If you are working with cosmetic parts like miniatures and helmets, then you might need to use something like Blender. Admittedly, that can be even more challenging than the other CAD programs I mentioned. However, if you spend a few hours learning some basics from YouTube, you should be able to do fundemental things like fixing holes.
Hope this helps. Good luck with your printing endeavors!
I love virtual cards. I use privacy.com for all my online stuff. Not a solution for this purpose unfortunately.
As for your divide-it-up approach, that's an interesting thought. I guess I'm a little concerned about signing up for several cards with several companies and several privacy policies. Feels a little weird to me, but I do see the merit in not having all your eggs in one basket.
As far as the Apple Card and Goldman Sachs is concerned, I'm still trying to figure out which details are given to whom. Its hard to find info about it. I wouldn't be surprised if you're right and it's the same as any other card from Goldman Sachs.
I recently got their hotspot and its been good. I got the MIFI X PRO 5G and have no complaints. I can't speak to the privacy of it, but it uses a T-Mobile sim card. Do you have any questions in particular?
Admittedly, some of the games I'm about to mention take time to get good enough at to turn your brain off, but here's some of my favorites for listening to audiobooks.
Bloons TD6
Any roguelite - currently I'm loving balatro and spelunky 2
Backpack battles
Tetris Effect
Mario sports games
Mini Metro
Kingdom
In general, I find it helpful to tell yourself that it's totally okay to "lose." When you are listening to an audiobook, you should be spending most of your attention on that. You don't need to take the game seriously.
They have filed some controversial/anti-innovative patents.
Their printers phone home with encrypted information. Last I checked, there were speculated security and privacy issues with it, though someone should correct me if this was resolved.
They only open source their slicer because of the GPL licence, but they don't open source anything else (firmware, hardware, etc).
Again, I just recommend people look into these things before they buy a printer. Do your own research and come to your own conclusions :)
I realize that this post sounds like I'm shilling for Kagi, so I'll say up front that I have no affiliation with them whatsoever. I'm just a satisfied customer. I’ll also fully admit that I don’t know much about the controversies or privacy issues other people are referencing. So look at others’ replies for that. I'll be doing my research about it too.
From a purely search perspective, I don’t really use their customizations. I don't need to. It far and away beats any competition in my experience. I’ve used it for over a year now, and will probably never switch off of it. Every month or two, when I have to use a different browser or machine that has DuckDuckGo, Startpage, or Brave, I get frustrated within a few minutes of searching. Maybe some self-hosted stuff can compete, but I haven't tried any of them for any length of time. Of the handful of people I've recommended it to IRL, they all switched over permanently.
But general praise isn’t worth anything without an explanation, so here is a long-winded one.
Lenses are awesome! Of the ones I use the most:
The amount of AI slop, SEO-optimized articles on other search engines is just abhorrent. I'm not sure how they do it, but Kagi does an amazing job at cutting them out. I no longer fear searching for "best vacuums for hard floors" or whatever. The results that come up are actual good review sites (Consumer Reports, Rtings.com, specific websites dedicated to vacuum reviews) and sometimes useful Reddit posts. On other search engines (at least back when I switched to Kagi), I only got AI generated listicles of what are the first 10 results on Amazon with "reviews" that are just rewordings of the amazon descriptions.
I know AI in search is controversial, but I think the "Quick Answer" feature is done very tastefully. I do think there are searches where AI summaries can be helpful, efficient, and unlikely to be inaccurate. The button doesn't feel intrusive, and I'll end up clicking it about 1/10 searches.
I like the little shield on the right side that gives you an insight into how many ads/trackers a site has. It's another thing that can help you make better choices on which websites to go to. Not a huge thing, but I like it.
I'll admit this one is less precise, but I feel like search results are much closer to what I'm actually looking for. When I'm searching for something very specific, the results are exactly what I want, not tangential.
Summary: For my personal day-to-day searches, Kagi is a no-brainer. It make searching easy and frictionless again. It's what I'd expect a good search engine to be like in 2026. And I think it's worth paying for a service when it provides value, especially when you aren't the product.
I mean, it depends on how much weight you want to add.
According to the internet, a penny weighs 2.5g or 0.088oz. A roll of pennies costs 50c and adds 125g or 4.4oz.
Some prints I've added just a few pennies to, and some a few rolls. It just depends what you need.
My solution has been pennies. They're cheap and and easy to get. Since they are a fixed size, it's really easy to model a cavity for them in your slicer. You can also leave them in their rolls for bigger projects.
Sounds like you've done your research.
A friend of mine has a Qidi X-Max 3, so I got to play around with it quite a bit. It is a beast! And apparently their support is top notch. I'm definitely going to look at Qidi next time I'm in the market.
All that said, the Q1 is not the same class of printer as the X-Max 3. It seems like it makes some compromises to hit the price it does. If you are looking for amazing build quality or extremely large prints, you probably want to save up for something like their Plus4. But if you don't care about those things, or don't want to spend more, the Q1 seems like a great choice.
As far as the polydrier goes, it seems good, but expensive. I've had a good experience just using my printer's heatbed to dry filament and using vacuum bags with redried dessicants. The bags are like $1-2 each, so even if 1/4 of them are leaky, it's still way cheaper than dry boxes. And I just collect the dessicants from my new filament spools and redry them in the microwave.
I haven't printed nylon, but I know you can get the cereal box dryboxes for like $7 each. If you plan to have tons of rolls of nylon, then it may be worth getting a full drying system, but for only a few rolls, I'd stick to cereal boxes.
If I were in your situation, I'd cheap out on the storage and put that extra ~$100 towards a Plus4 or some cool filament.
Glad to hear you're able to keep using it! No reason to get rid of good hardware. I hope other people do the same.
This sums it up perfectly! Don't make consumer-friendly synonymous with "snobs."
That's a very fair point. I also think the massive amount of outrage shows that many people didn't know the full extent of what they were signing up for. So I think is varies from person to person.
I wish I knew this months ago! This knowledge needs to be spread around more.
Also, if your phone doesn't show up on the deck, make sure to enable "show all devices"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Prusa specifically say you don't need to keep the CORE One doesn't need to be open because of its temperature control?
Been using it for about five years now. I absolutely love it. But I will say some of these comments make it sound like it's a little easier than it is. I'd say about 80% of your knowledge from Android will transfer over and just work. But the last 20% is a bit of a learning curve, and will take at least a few weeks to get the hang of.
What I recommended to some of my friends that switched is to get the phone and mess around with it for a few weeks before you switch your sim. Then you'll get the hang of things like alternative app stores and sandboxed play services, and you'll figure out what you can and can't do.
I will say the vast majority of things do work easily because of protection compatibility mode and sandboxed play services. But there will be some things that are just more hassle then they're worth. I find keeping a second device, like a tablet, without a custom ROM makes that stuff easier.
And there are some things that seem impossible to get working properly, at least for me. For example, casting to a TV is basically impossible from what I can tell. Also, tap to pay, even for things like tickets doesn't work (although if you have play services, you can use Google wallet for things with barcodes).
Overall, it's totally worth trying out. Just don't set your expectations too high. You're not getting a completely "just works" experience.
As for other custom ROMs, I've tried CalyxOS and LineageOS for MicroG. I didn't find either of them quite as good, but that was many years ago. Maybe they've gotten better.
I've been reading the other comments, and while people are encouraging, their comments seem a bit too "you HAVE to learn CAD." You definitely don't NEED to know CAD. I made basic parts and modifications in the slicer for nearly a year after I started printing, and it worked really well. However, if you are considering learning a full CAD program, I have two pieces of advice.
First pertains to if you are working with functional parts. Then you are talking about a parametric CAD program (fusion, onshape, FreeCAD, etc.). In this case, I think it's worth learning for you, and it's not as hard as it seems. You say you have SketchUp experience, so I'm assuming you have decent spatial reasoning. I know someone with no tech literacy nor programming experience who learned a CAD program very well in less than a month of following tutorials in her free time. Just give it a try, and it's a skill you'll be happy to have.
If you are working with cosmetic parts like miniatures and helmets, then you might need to use something like Blender. Admittedly, that can be even more challenging than the other CAD programs I mentioned. However, if you spend a few hours learning some basics from YouTube, you should be able to do fundemental things like fixing holes.
Hope this helps. Good luck with your printing endeavors!
I love virtual cards. I use privacy.com for all my online stuff. Not a solution for this purpose unfortunately.
As for your divide-it-up approach, that's an interesting thought. I guess I'm a little concerned about signing up for several cards with several companies and several privacy policies. Feels a little weird to me, but I do see the merit in not having all your eggs in one basket.
As far as the Apple Card and Goldman Sachs is concerned, I'm still trying to figure out which details are given to whom. Its hard to find info about it. I wouldn't be surprised if you're right and it's the same as any other card from Goldman Sachs.
You can have a primary network and guest network. As far as I can tell, you can't have more than that.
You can set DNS manually.
Here is a link to a pretty comprehensive user guide that explains all the settings. Maybe I missed something about the SSIDs. https://static.inseego.com/us/download/mifixpro-userguide-tmobile.pdf
I recently got their hotspot and its been good. I got the MIFI X PRO 5G and have no complaints. I can't speak to the privacy of it, but it uses a T-Mobile sim card. Do you have any questions in particular?
I try to buy things on GOG when I can just for the sake of diversifying my dependence on one company.
There are plenty of guides to setting up Heroic Launcher on the Deck. Once its set up, it's easy to install games.
I've found GOG games to run perfectly fine, and cloud saves work perfectly.
Lastly, I saw some other people saying GOG doesn't have the latest version of this game specifically, so definitely check that before buying.
Admittedly, some of the games I'm about to mention take time to get good enough at to turn your brain off, but here's some of my favorites for listening to audiobooks.
Bloons TD6
Any roguelite - currently I'm loving balatro and spelunky 2
Backpack battles
Tetris Effect
Mario sports games
Mini Metro
Kingdom
In general, I find it helpful to tell yourself that it's totally okay to "lose." When you are listening to an audiobook, you should be spending most of your attention on that. You don't need to take the game seriously.
Thanks for replying! I like your suggestions.
In addition
They have filed some controversial/anti-innovative patents.
Their printers phone home with encrypted information. Last I checked, there were speculated security and privacy issues with it, though someone should correct me if this was resolved.
They only open source their slicer because of the GPL licence, but they don't open source anything else (firmware, hardware, etc).
Again, I just recommend people look into these things before they buy a printer. Do your own research and come to your own conclusions :)