I'm a little late to the party but here's my advise. I designed and build my first 3D printer 13 years ago, at times it would print far better than anything on the market back then but it was massively unreliable and quality was very variable. I was constantly re designing parts and making it better over the years. 3D printing was the hobby it wasn't a tool. I always said to people back then when they came to me with this new super cheap printer, do you want a hobby or a tool, they all wanted a tool but didn't want to pay the price and instead bought printers that were quickly designed with cheap parts and many design flaws. I always said to them buy a Prusa if you want a tool. Finally I think 7 years ago I took my own advise and purchased a Prusa Mk3S and within 2 months the printer I designed was taken apart and never used again. The Mk3S has over 1000 hours of print time and one part failure the wire to the bed temperature sensor because for a while the build plate axis was causing the wire to touch the wall which slowly broke the wire cores. This was replaced with a cheap equivalent sensor off ebay.
Roll forward a few years and the Mk4 came out and I bought one as it looked so much better. The real improvement was proper bed leveling and speed, I print with 0.6, 0.4 and 0.25 nozzles and changing them on the MK3S took 30 minutes and often the many print failures after until I got the sweet spot with the z height. With the Mk4 it's a few minutes and it's done. To be fair it is a lot quicker for the same print quality, around 60% of the time, off the top of my head. I also updated that to the improved Mk4S at little cost and it made quite the difference in print quality. That's the great thing with Prusa you can upgrade your printer with official upgrade packs.
Roll forward a few more years and the CoreOne came out and I couldn't resist and this is the printer that mainly gets used today because it is so well designed but it prints exactly the same as the Mk4 and the same speed which is a little disapointing. It's enclosed so I can print more exotic filaments but I haven't done much of that yet. I do need to upgrade it to the plus version but for me the benefits are so minimal, this upgrade you can print most off the parts and buy a few screws. There is a very interesting multi tool version coming out soon which I may go for, mainly to try out multi colour printing and the possibility of prints using 3 different nozzle sizes, 0.25 for the outside and 0.6 for the inside or adding more strength with large layer lines. For me 3D printing is still a hobby as well as having tools that I can press a few buttons and leave the printer for 16 hours and not even contemplate coming back to a failed print, I've had so many balls of spaghetti I still check on the CoreOne but it hasn't let me down yet. It always used to be really important to keep the nozzle clean and make sure the first layer went down well. Honestly now I just turn it on and control it from my computer and don't get rid of the ouze that comes out the nozzle while it's warming up or check the first layer. It just works everytime which still amazes me.
The main things I've learnt over the years is you don't need a big build volume, my first printer was 300mm square and the full size got used once for a 25 hour print vase. I do tend to use the full size of my CoreOne these days but with some clever design, dowels and glue a small build plate isn't an issue. I've always be interested in multi colour printing but it is expensive due to filament waste (this is getting better) and the sheer quantity of different colour filaments you'll end up buying. I know honestly I'd be happy printing with my old Mk3S+ still, it's slower but it sits not doing anything for most of it's life so the time doesn't really matter.
I know I'm a massive Prusa fan boy and many people end up loving the brand they use, 3D printers are very Ford or Cheve. I came close to buying a Bambo printer before the Mk4 was released, the thing that held me back was spare parts, the Chinese control everything approach and back then they were very new to the scene. They have lasted and created a lot of great printers and forced the price of all printers down. Parts are very bespoke and they try to force you to buy everything from them even filament. There was a massive issue a year ago with a firmware update they did that was a real security issue for many, I don't remember the detail. But so many people swear by them so they must be good.
As for Creality and all the other clones, I know 10+ people who have bought them hoping for a tool and ended up with a forgotten hobby that collects dust. When I talk to them about it there is always this new mod that will make it great, a lot of them have the band new mods sitting in a box on the printer still not fitted, my boss has a huge Lulzbot with £400 worth of upgrades boxed next to it, they have been sitting there for the 4 years I've worked for him. When we need parts I bring in one on my printers! They are all engineers who enjoy a challenge but getting the printer to work as they expected it to out the box feels too much like the day job so they sit collecting dust.
With Prusa they are still trying to hold onto the open source better future concept so everything is open even the slicer which is the core of most printers these days, even Bambo slicer uses the Prusa software at it's core. I dropped a printer on another a year or so ago during our house move and broke a part, an hour later after downloading the part from the Prusa website and printing it on another printer it was printing again. The printers they make will always be fixable as they were designed that way. The new prices are high due to the smaller numbers build and the open source mantra, biuying on you end up paying indirectly for every other printer manufacturer getting a cheap slicer they just need to re badge.
Knowing what I know now if I was to start out again, I'd by a second hand Prusa as mine have proved the reliability and resilience over the years. If I wanted to print with one nozzle I'd buy a Prusa Mini basically a Mk3S+ but smaller and much cheaper with a really interesting design to reduce parts, a quick look on ebay and they are going for £180. If I wanted to change nozzles I'd buy a Mk4 and get the Prusa upgrade to S or buy a MK4S. Now checking prices scrub that, I'd buy 2x Mini's as the second hand price of Mk4s is so high. I'd put a 0.25 nozzle on one for printing people and objects where detail really matters, with a 0.05mm layer height the layer lines are so small even paint runs like a plastic model kit. On the other I'd put a 0.6mm nozzle and use it to print anything larger that doesn't need the detail. It would take time to get both setup correctly but once this is done it would be plain sailing.
