Anycubic Kobra S1 Combo: problems, parts and running costs

Checked: 2026-10-05

Summary

The printer is the reliable part: every independent review of it rated the hardware well, TechRadar measured average X/Y dimensional error of 0.21 mm, and Tom’s Hardware saw very few failures over hundreds of hours. What owners actually report is the feeder and the colour workflow — ACE Pro jams after a print or two, colour bleed from purge you can neither see nor tune from the slicer, the same test model going from 43 minutes single-material to 14 hours as four materials, and a mobile camera that fails to connect most of the time. Running cost is filament plus purge waste and an eventual activated carbon pack, and no source prices any of it, so the yearly total is unknown. It was a good buy well under $450 in the Anycubic US store in October 2026; above roughly $500-550 the comparison set changes.

Common problems and fixes

ACE Pro filament jams and feed failures — the most frequent signal, and Anycubic documents it itself with a wiki page titled “ACE Pro abormal filament clogging” covering blockage in the drive gear, in the buffer and inside the unit. Owners on that page report systematic blocking traced to a tube lock washer in the rear four-spool hub, a drive wheel replacement that did not fix feeding, a unit that pushes filament straight back out on insertion, and slow feeding that hangs up mid-print; a separate r/anycubic thread is titled “Clogging after 1-2 prints”. The documented fix is extruder disassembly to pull the broken filament out, and one owner cleared it with a factory reset; error code 11504 means unknown filament sitting in the extruder and needs the same manual cleaning. CGMagazine ties a cluster of community reports to one firmware release that stopped recurring once that firmware was replaced, so check the firmware version at first power-on and update before the first multi-colour job. No Anycubic bulletin names the release, and jams are hardware faults the one-year warranty would cover in principle, but no source records a warranty claim being paid for one. [11][14][15][17]
Colour bleed from purge you cannot see or control — Tom’s Hardware’s main observed failure cause over hundreds of hours, attributed to the machine cutting filament before retracting it, in the manner of Bambu printers, which leaves melted chunks at the nozzle that have to be pushed out before the next colour starts. The slicer never reports how much material a colour change wastes, the purge amount can only be changed from the printer’s own touchscreen, and there is no purge object to absorb it. Workaround: raise purge on the touchscreen and print your own purge volume in the slicer. No source measured the waste in grams, and a software gap is not a warranty item. [7]
Multi-colour jobs get dramatically slower — TechRadar printed the same test model in 43 minutes single-material and 14 hours as four materials, and explicitly declined to recommend the machine for fast multi-colour work. Fabbaloo’s four-colour CuteDino ran 25.5 hours, further than estimated, and an owner with roughly 200 print hours called a 21-hour estimate that took 22.5. Nothing to fix; budget hours per colour change or keep heavy work single-colour. [6][10][18]
Filament is hard to load into ACE Pro slots 3 and 4 — Tom’s Hardware found these slots frequently miss on the first attempt because the unit feeds extra filament into the neighbouring slot, and owners separately report filament tying up in the rear hub, where the practical fix is cutting the stuck section out. Feed slowly and check the adjacent slot afterwards. [7][18]
The mobile camera and remote monitoring fail most of the time — The Gadgeteer hit frequent “timeout, please try again” errors on both local Wi-Fi and cellular, though the streaming looked good when it worked, and one long-term owner puts the mobile camera failure rate at “probably 70%+”. CNET’s sharper complaint is the app itself, which is the same one as the Kobra 3 and ad-loaded. Workaround: do not depend on the app for monitoring. No fix is documented and it is not a warranty item. [8][9][18]
Inconsistent Z offset and bed level — the r/AnycubicKobraS1 common-issues thread collects reports traced to a dirty bed or a nozzle with filament residue, and records a required settings change of Z-offset type from “Slope” to “Auto”. Clean the plate and the nozzle, then re-run the auto calibration. [16]
The print-head area is fragile to work on — owners report it is easy to break wires on and the internal pendulum or spring inside is easy to lose, Fabbaloo asks for an easier hotend cable connection because the cable breaks easily, and The Gadgeteer broke old PETG off inside the print head and spent a couple of hours on disassembly before Anycubic shipped the replacement part in about a week and a half from China. A pinched blue wire to the filament sensor on the same thread was replaced under warranty. [8][10][16][18]
Layer shifts during colour swaps — one owner moving from a Kobra S1 Combo to a Bambu H2C reports running into layer shifts on every colour swap with the Anycubic and none with the Bambu out of the box; another owner, after less than a week with the Bambu, says it showed him how poor his Kobra S1 was. Two owners’ comparative opinions, not a measured failure rate. Re-level and check the Z-offset type before blaming the feeder. [18]

Parts and consumables

Filament — the only real running cost. The Anycubic US store lists optional bundles in 4KG PLA High Speed, 4KG PLA Special, 4KG ASA and 8KG, but no source gives a price per kilogram, and no source measured purge waste in grams, so a yearly spend cannot be computed from the research. TPU 95A is single-colour only and cannot run through the ACE Pro at all. [1][5]
0.4 mm High Flow nozzle — fitted in the box, quick-release and tool-free, so a clog is recoverable by the user without tools. Anycubic lists 0.25, 0.6 and 0.8 mm as alternatives, and Tom’s Hardware identifies the fitted nozzle as the 0.4 mm High Flow. No source gives a price for a replacement nozzle. [1][5][7]
Second ACE Pro feeder — what takes the machine from 4 colors to 8, sold as a separate Anycubic product. Not a consumable and no price appears in the sources. Confirm which feeder you are buying, because Anycubic states it may ship the ACE 2 Pro 16-color version in place of the Combo when the Combo is out of stock, and that feeder belongs to a different product family. [1][4]
Four-spool filament hub — the rear hub is where a tube lock washer was blamed for systematic blocking, and Anycubic sells a separate 4-color filament hub whose compatibility table lists the Kobra S1 Combo. No price in the sources. [14][19]
Activated carbon pack — one ships in the box and goes in the rear compartment for fume filtration. It is the consumable most likely to need replacing, and no source gives a price or a replacement interval for it. [5][8]
Anti-block module, nozzle cleaning module and silicone nozzle part — all three ship in the box, and the anti-block and cleaning parts are the ones that wear out on a working hotend. No source gives a price or a replacement interval for any of them. [5][7][8]
Nozzle cleaner and grease — both ship in the box, alongside four filament tubes, cable ties and a USB drive with the slicer installers. Owners clean rather than replace. No published price. [5]

Yearly running cost

Not enough data for a total. The research identifies the recurring costs and prices none of them: filament, with no per-kilogram price anywhere in the sources and no measurement of purge waste in grams, plus an activated carbon pack that needs replacing eventually with no price and no interval attached. There are no filters, pods or subscriptions. The manual’s rating of 500/1500 W is a printed specification for the machine and feeder, not a measured wall draw and not split per component, so no electricity figure can be derived from it; two mains outlets are needed, one for the printer and one for the ACE Pro. Compute your own number from filament volume and print hours before treating any per-year figure as real.

When it is a good buy

Well under $450: good value for a maker who wants four dried spools feeding one small enclosed CoreXY and who will tune purge by hand. The Anycubic US store listed the bundle at $399.00 in October 2026.
At $429.00 in October 2026: the ACE 2 Pro “Enhanced Version”, which is a 16-color feeder rather than the four-color unit reviewed here, and the version Anycubic says it may ship in place of the Combo. Confirm which feeder arrives before paying for the four-color one.
Above roughly $500-550: the argument weakens, because at that level the comparison set becomes Bambu-class multi-material machines with mature slicers and larger color counts.

Anycubic’s own stores disagree on price for the same bundle: the main store listed the bare Kobra S1 at $401.00 and the Combo at $459.00 in October 2026, both shown against a struck-through $631.00, and regional pages quote far higher, so treat the US store figure as the reference and ignore the rest. Named alternatives and when each is the better choice: the bare Kobra S1, if you only ever print one colour, since the feeder and its dryer are exactly what the Combo premium buys; the Kobra S1 Max Combo, if you need a 350 mm cube, a 350 °C hotend and a 65 °C heated chamber, or more than eight colors; the Bambu Lab P1S, the direct comparison CNET made, if a mature slicer and app matter more to you than an active dryer; and a Bambu H2C if colour-swap layer shifts decide the purchase, since one owner switched to it and stopped seeing them. Look elsewhere if you need fast multi-colour production, more than eight colors, multi-colour TPU, or a single wall receptacle. [1][2][4][9][18]