Great to hear that I'm not the only one who had issues with it. Nice review!

I had the same issue of the nozzle getting clsoer and closer to the print on My Ender5 Plus until it eventually knocked the part off the bed and I figured out it was the leadscrew nuts that had been tightened within an inch of their life to stop them coming off in shipping and it was also causing a screeching sound so I slackened off each screw on the leadscrew nuts a half turn and that solved both issues

Thanks for the honest review. I was considering the Ender 7, but ended up getting the CR-10 Smart because it had the auto-level and large bed. So far I’m having no issues with the unit I got.

Thanks for the insights! Great in-depth details. I feel this printers needs Joel's angle grinder touch...👀

Good points. Please follow up on those problems Thanks for sharing your experience with all of us 👍😀

I've had this printer 5 months and I don't see any of these problems. The only tweak has been 210C for PLA and a set speed of 200mm/sec. Also, I set flow to 90%. The most reliable printer I have. The top layers are not as nice as they should be, but I think a logical upgrade is to an all metal hot end. The new Creality glass bed at 65C is outstanding.

Wow, even with all notifications being turned on it's the first time I got one. "Turning off and on again" trick works! ;)

I've owned an Ender 7 for several months and this is the first review that actually seems to describe the machine accurately. I've had the same issue with random over and under extrusion. No combination of settings and filament will fix it, seems to be an inherent issue. Print quality is terrible for a printer that costs £500, my £300 Sovol SV01 is far superior in terms of both quality and consistency. The print bed is also deeply underwhelming. All my other printers have 'ultrabase' type glass beds, and this is by far the worst. PLA barely sticks to the textured side at all, and while the smooth side is a little better it's still bad. I fitted a BLTouch to make sure levelling wasn't the problem and it didn't help at all. Finally I bodged in a spare SV01 glass bed and that works much better, although I lose some print area because it's not the right shape and size. But it's not a total solution. The Ender 7 still randomly prints too high or too low on the first layer. I'm positive this is something to do with the bizarre bed mounting system, which supports the bed on only one side and is very shonky indeed. I could go on with a legion of complaints; the E7 is noisy with no silent board available for it, Creality haven't released the Marlin source code, and there's also a complete lack of spares for the printer. No beds, no hot ends, no replacement rails, no boards, etc. Creality seem to have abandoned it already. If something breaks, you're in trouble. tl;dr - the Ender 7 is a cargo cult Voron. Creality thought that building a rigid frame and fitting it with linear rails and a core XY movement system would give them a fast, good quality printer. It didn't, because they have no real idea what they're doing.

That seems par for the course for Creality. They put together a list of quality ingredients and then for some bizarre reason substitute sand for sugar and you end up with a turd pie. Excellent review though. Look forward to hear if it can be salvaged in any way.

Honestly this feels really reminiscent of the issues I also had with the ender6. It took almost a year of upgrades to get it working along with custom Klipper firmware with a raspi, good review! Hope Creality gets good at the CoreXY game, bc mostly my ender6 has been a great motion system and not much more

Awesome review! You covered everything I wanted to know 🤩👌 500mm/ss acceleration is a shame… omg

Thanks for the review. 👍🏻

Had all the same issues you described. Was a very steep learning curve for me as a novice two months ago. The issue is definitely the extruder and/or hotend. It cannot extrude enough for high speeds. Check the Creality Slicer flow settings, they "fixed" it by setting 125% (!) flow rate for infill at 250mm/s. Also it's very "spongy" and delayed, so it's impossible to get the right amount of extrusion, because you have to retract like half a kilometer before the corner. Also couldn't tune linear advance (Merlin) or pressure advance (Klipper) because of that. Went with a Mellow NF Sunrise direct extruder and wow. Totally different machine. Perfectly clean prints now, even with high speeds.

Nice review! I do have to admit I kept my fingers crossed when I watched it waiting for you to say "so here I klipperized it, did an input shaping calibration and now watch it print at 3000mm/s^2 acceleration" 😁 but when your Z problems appeared I knew that wouldn't happen in the rest of the video... 😕

I would like to suggest that you make sure that the stepper drivers on the board are adequately cooled. The lab in which I'm doing my PhD research has 3 old Taz Printers and one of them was consistently exhibiting a Z height issue after a rebuild which we couldn't figure out. Turned out to be a cooling issue in which the Z stepper driver wasn't adequately cooled. Once we put a beefy fan on the board, it came back to life. Maybe it would help with this one as well. who knows.

I’d love to see you do a review of the SV03.

I like your onest words and would like to see what you are going to make of the printer. I own a Ender 7 as my first Printer und learning..... At first I print slow to tweak the Cura settings and get the best quality. PID tuning, feeder stepper motor adjustment (was nearly perfect), PTFE Bowden tube, got rid of the head ring what's o ever housing to see my prints and printed a small housing for the cable exit. Installed a BL touch.

It's interesting to see, because I had exactly the same issues with noccle digging into the prints as it was going up the layers on my Ender 3 Max. I changed the surface to a thicker glass and installed BL Touch, but it never resolved the issue. Printer went through the service twice. It definitely got better, but the issue never really fully resolved.

Would be nice see some build using differents things like Orbiter 2.0 extruder, Phaetus Dragonfly HIC, some custom using the new trianglelabs CHC heat element, volcomod or volcodragon hotend.

thanks man

My boy dopestoner930 came a long ass way, I remember us trouble shooting the da Vinci. Good shit buddy.

a VolcoMosq LGX and Klipper would be a improvement

Hi really nice review, thanks I would like a follow up. Have you testet it with klipper and direct drive and other hotend? The sale price is half now, so if it would be any good with upgrades, i might consider buing it..

A very good review of this printer. It is refreshing to see a frank evaluation of the product without glossing over the issues. You mentioned that you are currently reviewing the Ender-3 S1. I am also impressed with what this printer offers. However, I'm a little concerned with the amount of current that appears to flowing through the ribbon cable to the heat block heating element. How does this not burn up the ribbon cable given the light gage wires of this cable? The wires from the heating element to the breakout board look to be of appropriate gauge. How does this even work?

Did you do a follow-up? I wonder if a direct drive and new hot end with the Sonic Pad with bring out this machines potential?

Great review. In the future when you test a filament printer could you please test ninjaflex? Thanks. Anybody that does a review on a filament printer I'm asking for this. The caveat is it needs to print pla well before progressing to the next filament as you've pointed out in this review.

Hitting infill remind me of when my abs prints release from the bed and curl up. Maybe the bed or the z mount is 'tacoing' after being heat soaked causing a variation in z height. PID tune for the bed could help as well.

hi. thank you for that great video. did you continu to try to get it to work great?? i did put the insanity firmware on it and i use superslicer. i do get way better print now. but what are your experiences since that video. thank you again for your video. they are great.

i have the ender 5 plus wich I upgraded withe the pei coated spring steel hot plate and microswiss dual gear direct drive extruder setup and I absolutely love it. I'm printing any material I want with great results once some minor adjustments are made from one material to another. Currently turning out amazing quality masks and helments in tpu. Basically what I'm saying is the ender 5 plus is so good I'm sad to hear that Creality dropped the ball so hard with the 7.

Thanks for this review! My next printer is going to be a CoreXY machine and for that reason I was considering the Ender 7. Definitely ruled out at this point (and thanks for saving me from that temptation!) So many people get such great results from the Ender3 printers, it's easy to assume those Creality folks have the 3D printer making game completely figured. Doesn't appear to be the case. Now to decide between Voron 2.4 vs Trident vs RatRig V3.

Please make the upgraded review of this printer :)

The first think i do with new printers is go over all the screws and wiring some time the extruder gear wheels have been lose or out of alignment and the tension spring has been to weak, so i normally upgrade these and shorten the bowden tube to reduce the friction I have found many printers that i have had, is i have had to tune the Z height and E step calibration and also the heat of the bed and nozzle are out by about 5 -10 degrees, So I have not found a printer that does not have accurate calibration yet one thing i can think of, is the larger stepper motors could be drawing to much power from the main board and causing a surge, and that could be the reason the motors are making more noise, I normally see DM542 stepper drivers used for Small cnc machines where the noise does not matter as these are not quiet unlike the TMC2208 drivers that should of been used and have less noise/frequency problem than the DM542 and they should be very well insulated and they are not, so this could also be causing issues like stepper motors being out of sync because the pulse to move the motors are not accurate. so i i buy a used Ender 7 i will change the drivers, and im sure that will solve the issue with it.

I used to have similar issues when I swapped to a mosquito magnum + until I started to tune linear advance for each filament I use. Not sure if the ender 7 supports linear advance but if it does I would recommend trying that to see if it makes a difference in the print quality.

thanks so much for the great review! was really hoping this would be the "ender 3" of core xy printers. could you recommend a core xy that performs well around the same price, or are we looking at $1k+ for both quality and speed out of the box?

maybe the design with a falling table. could have some sort of back lash where the table dosnt drop exactly the right measurement each time

You may want to try swapping out that red extruder with a bmg.

i found using prusaslicer made a huge difference. not at 250mm/sec yet but i'm working at it.

I think the modern technology in tmc drivers is way ahead of those oldschool drivers. I used this kind in CNC builds, but would never look at them for a printer and my newer CNC uses servos with integrated drivers. Feels like they had to get rid of old stock.

Your issue could be over-extrusion. Did you check the extruder calibration ? (steps/mm). Then, unless expressly limited in the firmware, maximum acceleration values are easily modified (M201+M204). Eventually, you can compile and update the firmware yourself. Worth doing at least if the Linear Advance is not activated (M900). There is no reason you should not get a good print out of this printer... (I own an Ender-5)

Drivers and stepper motors, maybe even the control board. They're the biggest change I see from the Ender 6, excluding linear rails, which can produce much better prints. So many issues relating to movement of the bed and extruder that is where my focus for the issues would be. Any purchaser is Creality's beta tester.

I bought two in October and returned them

Thanks for another great video. I am looking to buy one for my son. I am really very confused between Ender 3 S1 Pro, Ender 5 Pro and Ender CR10 V3... Can you pls advice?

I haven’t looked but, did you ever end up doing any mods to the ender 7?

How are the Mods coming along? I would like to see this working.

I'd love to see you throw an Eva carriage on there with a volcomosq or a rapido. Glad I opted to build a voron instead of buying the 7 when it was released!

They might have some funky pressure advance baked into the firmware that they did not calibrate well or that only works well on some % of their machines

I went through two Ender 7's in November and December. Both had broken touch screens, limiting functionality a great deal. I never had a successful print. Creality airmaled a new screen for the replacement E7, but it too was cracked on arrival and running some weird firmware that wasn't a Creality interface. After all that toil, back it went. My modified Ender 6 is still less than a 7 and approaches the touted speeds. I think they probably just done a Ender 6 Pro with linear rails. As for the S1, my experience was great until tonight. 4 hours into an 10 hour print, I was woken up by the on-board alarm. Reset the printer to find that the hotend isn't heating, and the JST jack is broken. I got my start with Creality, but there are too many quality problems. Oh, interesting fact: the start gcode in the Creality Slicer profile for the Ender 3 S1 doesn't include any ABL gcode, just G28 and the same starting gcode for the other Ender 3s. That's extremely disappointing.

I wanted a core xy and took the chance since the price drop(paid $430) and was my cheapest option. I watched a bunch of review and they seemed mixed between hate and love. Guess I was lucky and I love mine, haven't pushed it really hard, but my prints are working well. My only complaint is the installed firmware is closed. I saw TH3D has a marlin version that works with a different display, Im also seeing Klipper config files coming out so I can configure one of my RPI.

Good review. Sad to see Creality dropping the ball like this. This is probably why Naomi parted ways with them from a quality point of view. I'd say mod the heck out of it. Klipper and LGX/Dragon combo should be good.

Howdy! Did you ever get the mods done you talked about in this video? I bought an Ender 7 on CL and would like to know if it can be improved with mods. Thanks

can you state the price first thing in the spec section? the pricing is still the key factor when people decide what to buy. thanks

I honestly don't see the problems reported here. 3 things are mandatory on ender 7 after assembly: 1 the traction gear (sometimes without tightening) 2 the strap holders (sometimes without tightening) 3 extruder calibration (values very out of the correct) done that, and some tweaks to the slicer (cura 4.13.1) i got fantastic prints in 1/4 the time my ender 3 v2 the machine is very good but the assembly and adjustments not so much

i print with my ender 5 pro at 250 no issues. does like to make the whole table vibrate from time to time tho haha

I've been contemplating buying a 3D printer for a long time I am skilled with design my biggest want for a printer is resolution I don't care about speed I would like to hear what you think about the delta printers thank you

I am using this Ender 7 machine for a month now. I was frustrated by the lack of any specs, source code or any details about its hardware. I couldn't change the stock limited functions with any custom firmware. I then installed Klipper and after a lot of tuning and experimentation, I finally got the perfect print at real 250mms. I can even bump it upto 300mms. But I am very happy with 180mms for normal prints. Capable hardware but poor software and support.

Had always wondered about it. Was just doing the microswiss extruder upgrade and saw the vid. Glad I didn’t buy one!!

ModBot, did you ever do the upgrades? I have an Ender 7 and to be honest, a slightly modified Ender 3 V2 is more reliable...I got suckered in on the faster speed, but most things I do aren't much faster at all. What are good printers that can actually print faster than an Ender 3?

I don’t have any of these problems. That sucks so many people are having bad experiences with this machine because mine works great.

Hi! How did the mods go, if you did? My bud told me that the Z carriage is too flimsy and not very accurate

How are you going on the ender 7 with klipper etc. 🤔

6:53 That's where my trouble started.... I used the printer for 4 days, it's been a paper weight for 4 months now.. Creality won't help me with it either. Their initial response was, I didn't know what I was doing, (not wrong but besides the point) and I just needed to learn how level it. They completely misunderstood that I was explaining a noise coming from the motors and the Z-axis stopped moving. I don't know, I will get it fixed, but right now I'm still too mad at it.

I simply can't understand why Creality keeps changing to new controller boards and now stepper drivers. There are plenty of fast and great printers using TMC 2209s for example. Great review, looking forward to your progress with this one.

Top Vid. You've become one of my favorite reviewers! 👍 ELSE:Typical Creality. They hand out basically *untested* stuff with overblown "specs"🤥 _Community_ makes parts *"an Ender"* 🤬

Machines that are priced in that range shouldn't need a complete overhaul to get them to work decently. For the same money, I'd opt for the Qidi Tech X-Plus. Bigger build volume, fully enclosed, capable of printing ABS as well as other high temp materials and ready out of the box. I'm not sure that the cantilever design of the platform on the Creality Ender 7 lends itself to using v-groove wheels with that build volume. If you take a look at the Qidi Tech X-Plus you'll notice they use dual linear guide rails on both sides of the build platform to assure uniform support. Nice honest review though on the Creality.

****quietly whistles in the corner with an E3v2 and E5+ on klipper and over 5000mm/s acceleration.

Are you sure, the layerheight is a multiple of the minimal steps the z-motor can do? Maybe the firmware is bad and does not compensate for loosing fractions of a step every layer?

maybe with a spring pulling it down

I have not even got to print anything.. the noise when it moves diagonal is awefull.. might return it.. :(

Maybe z-steps need calibrate?

I have the same problem on my Voron 0.1 on high speeds. Sooner or later the nozzle Digs in in the model. :(

surely they could've used some tmc5160s to drive those big steppers but still keep them quiet

not sure what happened to Creality. Had a few versions of the Ender 3 and loved them. Purchased a CR10S pro and had nothing but problems, even sending 2 back. Now have a Cr10 Smart and it is also pretty fiddly. I have a CR6 Se and pretty happy with it. Creality has just become to hit and miss for me to buy another machine from them

Maybe the Steppers? Motors and drivers are new to this machine, they could be just not that accurate or something like the Vref not dialed in correctly.

were the z steps calibrated correctly?

Try a different hot end-nozzle. Could be the problem.

Is there any firmware upgrade that might resolve the problems?

Sadly the E7 just seems half finished. . LIke they got all the main parts done, but didn't do any testing to get even close to Ender 3/5/6 quality, even at the same speeds (allowing the user to sacrifice quality for speed if desired)

Can you adjust z steps?

Why didn't you just up the accels in cura?

cr30 was first creality core xy

just a rugular sprite-Extruder from the Ender 3s1 would have been interesting...maybe thats the way to go. The Ender 7 is only 235eu here in Germany.

Creality quality at its finest.

Why was your first step not to calibrate the Z-steps..? If there's a mis-match in what the machine thinks the position of the bed is and where it actually is, that should be one of the first places to go to -_-

why make a fast printing machine and not have direct drive and a decent hot end?

For that price you could buy two Sapphire core xy printers and still have some money left for mods...

was your bed level ?

U still use the ender 7 ?

Do ya still use the ender 7 or no

This behaves just like my Ender 6, which is now an expensive paperweight.

I think if you are going to buy a linear rail, corexy printer to fix up, you might as well start with the cheaper Two Trees Sapphire or SP printers. The Ender 7 is way too expensive for such poor performance.

I always say "up to" is not that it will do it or do it great, you also can say than it was a little bit of fake marketing.

I was very disappointed by the quality this machine was producing. As you said, the hotend is not a good one. The extruder is not good for this price tag. But replacing these two get you very good prints. But if you're planning to buy a new one, certainly not recommended.

Isn't it creality's third core XY? (Ender 5) or am I misunderstanding something? 😅

It's the bed, it tends to shake

"Taking this machine and hacking it up..." you mean "angle-grinder it up", right? 3DPN style 😅

I just got the Ender 7 a couple of weeks ago. I'm ready to throw it out the window.

Ender 5 is where the high value hitter is IMO.

I just can not wrap my mind why creality spits out so many models at so short intervals without spending the R and D time to perfect any of them at all. The result is a bunch of mid-range performance to poor performance machines.

Christ I'd be disappointed with this purchase. Glad I built a Voron 2.4 - costs heaps but at least it's not landfill.

Lol, on my ender 3v2 can do that speeds with 1600 acceleration 🤣