Still Kicks

3D printers · Elegoo

Elegoo Centauri Carbon

A cheap, enclosed CoreXY that owners keep for fast, clean single-colour prints, mostly after years of tinkering with an Ender, accepting that multi-colour was not part of the deal at purchase.

Read from 28 owner accountsUpdated September 26, 2026Thin evidence: 28 owner accounts so far, fewer than the 40 we want before we trust a pattern.Owner rating: none yetAdd yoursCompare it

What keeps coming up

Prints come out clean, and every account that raised print quality was positive: owners running PETG functional parts had them fit together without trouble, and one noted the stock 0.6 nozzle saved hours per large part with no loss they cared about.

Recurring in 6 of 28 accounts · See accounts
no owners yet

What keeps coming up against it

Owners are divided on reliability. Some describe it as a plug and play machine that lets them print instead of fix; others mention imperfections, a poor built-in camera, and the fact that multi-colour printing was a promised future feature rather than something they could buy with the printer.

Recurring in 7 of 28 accounts · See accounts
no owners yet
Life with it

The thing that stays with people is the jump from an older bed-slinger. Several owners came from an Ender 3, 3 V2, S1 or Mega X and describe the difference in speed as something they were not ready for: a benchy in a fraction of the time, and an end to hours spent levelling. A few now keep the old printer only for its larger bed and run everything else on the Centauri Carbon. Owners who bought it recommend it readily, usually in the same breath as a Bambu A1, and tell Ender owners to get a CoreXY and start printing more than fixing.

What people adjust to is the ecosystem. It is a single-colour printer out of the box, so owners who wanted colour changes either went elsewhere (one chose an Anycubic Kobra S1 for its multi-material unit, then admitted three weeks in they had not run a multi-colour print yet) or added a third-party multicolour system later. Price comes up constantly and always in its favour: enclosed, hardened nozzle, CoreXY, and frequently on sale for under 300. The camera is mentioned as a weak point. Build volume gets a couple of grumbles about 256 mm sides, but too few accounts to judge.

Reliability & repairs

On the positive side, owners talk about it as the machine that just works next to their older printers: parts in PETG come together, the 0.6 nozzle runs large jobs quickly, and nobody in the sample describes a clog or failed print on the Centauri Carbon itself (one owner's clog was on a different printer in the same shop). The negative accounts are less specific, referring to imperfections you may run into, a crappy camera, and the comparison with a more mature competitor that has a more developed ecosystem.

The long-term record here is thin. Most accounts are from owners who bought within the last year, several within the last month, and none describe a specific component wearing out or a repair. What owners actually do is keep using it as their main printer and hold on to the old machine for oversized jobs. Whether it holds up over multiple years is not something this sample can answer yet.

More detail
What owners praise, where they are split, and the follow-up timeline

What owners praise

  • value for money8 of 9who raised it
  • print quality6 of 6who raised it
  • printer recommendation6 of 6who raised it

Where owners are split

  • print speed4 for · 3 against · 0 mixedof 7 who raised it
  • reliability4 for · 3 against · 0 mixedof 7 who raised it
  • multi-material system3 for · 2 against · 1 mixedof 6 who raised it

Nothing has a clear majority against it yet. Counted from the owners who raised each subject, not from everyone. A subject is judged once at least 4 owners raise it.

12 more subjects came up from fewer than 4 owners each, which is not enough for a fair reading. To see how it stacks up, compare it with another machine.

Does it still kick?

2 weeks3 months6 months1 year2 years

The same owner, asked again at each point. Fills in as owners answer.

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Add yours

More in 3d printers: Creality Ender 3, Bambu Lab A1, Anycubic Kobra 3.

Where this came from

Where this came from

Public discussions we read and summarised in our own words. Nothing here was submitted to Still Kicks.

  • Forum threads 28 accounts
  • Owner accounts collected here 0
  • Also from ElegooElegoo Neptune 4 9

Counted from public accounts by people who said they own it, and summarised by Still Kicks in its own words. Not a manufacturer claim, a lab test or an estimate.

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