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See Creality printer's Here - https://geni.us/CrealityK2Pro
See My Creality A1 / SparkX i7 Review here - https://youtu.be/Oefj4o6m2Ec
You may have noticed that following my SparkX review, I then dumped out my K2 and K2 Pro reviews, outside of my regular schedule, this was in order to fulfil my requirements to proivide reviews in exchange for the hardware they provided. But going forward,I will no longer be working with them or accepting products from them to review.
In order to maintain my credibility as an independant reviewer, I will no longer work directly with Creality in any collaborative capacity for the forseeable future.
I have tried to resolve this through simple conversation, but at this point I can’t continue any partnership without clear assurances that reviewer independence and integrity will be protected. This is not about low views. It is not about free products. The video explains that I will still review Creality machines - but I’ll be doing so independently, because I’ve lost faith in the brand’s approach to criticism and transparency.
I’m also not the first person to reach this point. There are credible reports of similar behaviour happening before, and like those creators, my integrity matters more to me than any relationship with a brand. I’d rather this channel failed and I went and got a job than sell myself to any company that wants me to soften fair critique to suit a sales agenda. Based on how my videos have been received, the majority of you agree.
What I want - genuinely - is for Creality to take feedback on the chin, learn, and improve. I’m not here to help them manage perception. I’m here to give you honest, critical opinions about machines you’re spending your money on.
One more thing: the thumbnail says “Truth, Justice, Honour, Loyalty”. I’m not pretending I’m out here to administer justice. It’s just the code of the Thundercats - the thing I grew up with - and it’s always stuck with me as a simple way to describe how I try to operate.
Thundercats Ho.
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0:00
Right, so many of you know I don't really do this talking head stuff. It's not my thing
0:05
I'd much rather be talking about printers, tools, and things you can actually make
0:09
In fact, this isn't really even that. As you can probably tell from my eyes flicking to the side
0:15
I'm more reading a statement I want to make. But I've just experienced something that people
0:20
have accused me and other creators of for a while now, and it's something I have, frankly
0:25
defended against pretty hard because I'd never experienced it personally until now. So yeah
0:32
it actually happened. And the preamble intro here is important. I'd normally do this sort of thing
0:37
as a live video, but for anyone who's experienced my live videos, you'll know how easily distracted
0:42
I am and how I tend to waffle on. Yeah, more than this. This isn't a quick one. There is a lot of
0:48
important information in here, and whilst I'm sure someone will sarcastically put video starts at
0:54
such and such a time in the comments. Skipping that means not understanding the perspective
0:58
and you'll lose a lot of context. But I also need to make sure that what I publish here is accurate
1:04
and factual. So Creality, or at the very least a representative of said brand, tried to force my
1:12
hand and make me change my review. And not even in ways that even mattered, but they asked me to
1:18
remove things that the entire community already knew anyway and on top of that I'll say that
1:24
someone is playing games with YouTube algorithms by selectively paying to promote both my videos
1:31
and others to different audiences and I think that's to game the YouTube algorithm and yes
1:37
that's doable but in the long run that doesn't usually matter. Now I fully expect that some
1:43
people will see this video as no more than me having a whinge about Creality. I'm sure that
1:49
narrative will come up, which is exactly why later in this video I'll cite a solid historical example
1:55
of the brand doing similar things with another well-trusted creator, a very well-trusted creator
2:01
more so than me, and that's someone who recently released examples of the brand behaving the same
2:07
way over multiple years. Now all of this comes down to what actually happened, so let's rewind
2:13
properly. I've reviewed dozens of Creality products over the years, and honestly, the general tone of
2:18
those reviews has been pretty consistent. They're very mid-tier machines, which is absolutely fine
2:25
They tick a lot of boxes, but like many recent brands, they've been accused of more following
2:31
trends than true innovation in this space. I don't think that's an unfair way to put it, and
2:36
based on my own experience, and based on a large volume of reports of quality issues
2:41
i just don't feel they're a leading brand in terms of product quality either but even when saying
2:48
that i expect the majority of people who buy creality printers get machines that are mechanically
2:53
fine i genuinely do believe that but yeah i have still consistently perceived a larger volume of
3:00
quality complaints around creality than almost any other brand on the market now is that because
3:05
they sell more machines so proportionally you're just gonna see more complaints or are they actually
3:11
worse. Truthfully, I don't know and nobody does. I've said this now for a long time that there is
3:17
no responsible way to infer an individual product's overall quality from a single test unit. Even I
3:24
often wonder, has this printer I've just got been manipulated in some way before I got it
3:29
You know, cherry-picked so to speak? Not just from Creality but from any company. But let's say even
3:35
if I had 10 of the same printer that I bought myself, I'd need months of testing. But even then
3:40
are those 10 from a bad batch a good batch you just don't know i don't have the access to dozens
3:46
of machines or the space to run them for a year neither does almost any reviewer so all any of us
3:52
can really do in order to give you the viewer a responsible ysis is infer based on what has
3:59
come before and so a brand's reputation follows it across generations whether they like it or not
4:06
Now, at the same time, something I've said repeatedly in my reviews is that the value
4:11
equation of any 3D printer now goes well beyond the raw hardware performance
4:16
For example, let's forget we're talking about 3D printers. Think about PlayStation versus Xbox
4:22
The value isn't just the box, it's the games, the services, the ecosystem
4:28
Android versus iPhone is another perfect example. Openness versus closure. Hardware freedom versus ease of use
4:35
The point is, in most technology fields, raw hardware performance does not equal total product value
4:42
And so in 3D printing, one brand changed the face of the market about three years ago
4:48
not just by making a printer that worked out of the box, I would say not even by doing that
4:53
but by building a cohesive ecosystem, shared components, shared logic, shared upgrades
4:59
shared material shared software and a reputation to continually improve upgrade and add features
5:06
to the product you have after purchase that is value which exists and all of that is what i mean
5:13
when i say ecosystem my reviews have never been about how hot an end gets or how flowy a rate is
5:19
they've always been about the practical benefit what can you actually print how easy is it and
5:24
what real world value do you actually get from the provided features, software, and the way they've
5:30
been implemented, what does that infer long term? So I often talk about the core features, then the UI
5:36
the slicer, the overall ecosystem around the product in terms of software, hardware, and
5:42
accessories, and whether there is or isn't cohesion between it and other machines in that product line
5:49
Because, and yes, I know I'm repeating this, but it's the main point, all of those things do
5:54
add value to you, the consumer. Now whether those values matter to you specifically or not
6:01
it's just a decision to make and it should be an entirely dispassionate decision which I know
6:07
is asking a lot on the internet but all of this stuff is no more personal than deciding between
6:13
a bedslinger or an enclosed machine, a more open machine or an easier to use machine
6:18
a machine with rubber feet or plastic my job is to point out the difference so you can make an
6:24
informed purchase decision my job is not to influence you even though that's a natural effect
6:31
of just having a platform in the first place so with these beyond hardware elements i talk about
6:38
them often because honestly hardware has kind of hit a wall physics now seems more of a bottleneck
6:45
because you can only heat and cool material so fast before quality, accuracy, and strength start
6:52
to suffer as a natural result. And the other thing is, and this isn't a slight, but most reviews
6:57
online, including mine, don't even show the maximum potential of most printers. We show default profile
7:03
results from the profiles given to us by the brand, sometimes a bit more, but the point is with enough
7:10
time testing updates community support most printers can be pushed far further and with
7:16
enough effort when you do that the quality and performance difference between machines
7:20
shrinks to a point where i feel it likely imperceivable between them but that brings us back to the truth of modern reality and the modern reality is that most people don want to spend weeks tuning their machine or waiting for the brand to tweak it to
7:35
make it better. Most people want good enough out of the box. So this brings me back to when comparing
7:41
printers today, this is why I feel and focus on the real advancements are increasingly in the
7:48
software and ecosystem and that's why I put more focus on user experience. Some of those improvements
7:55
are genuine quality of life upgrades, adding new features. Others are just tweaks designed to look
8:01
better on paper, such as changing material purge values to claim faster color changes when the
8:06
trade-off is often worse quality. That kind of dressing up and more is, in my view, misleading
8:12
marketing, something I'm passionately against. By all means, brands make cheaper products, make
8:19
products more accessible to more people. But pretending these things are the same or better
8:24
than machines, which are technically leading when it comes to innovation in this area
8:28
is absolute pretense. And I feel it's designed to do no more than fool people. And that brings me
8:36
neatly to the Creality 1A. I'm sorry, the Spark X i7. That's quite an obvious joke. Go and watch
8:43
my review. I'll link it down below. I don't think it was unfair. I don't even think it was overly
8:48
critical, especially for a machine that I genuinely struggled to get good results out of
8:53
And as always, I just called it what it was and what many people were already thinking. And I can't
9:01
ignore the fact that when the same company sells the Spark X i7, the Creality High, and is about to
9:07
release the Ender 3 v4, all very similar machines, the obvious question becomes, why does this even
9:15
exist? And I also inferred that there's a large messiness element within Creality as a brand
9:21
where perhaps multiple disconnected teams, and yeah, they're people probably working independently
9:27
end up creating very similar products with little in the way of cross compatibility from hardware to
9:34
support. That alone is a very direct and real contrast to brands who have fewer machines and
9:40
once released put more focus into not only refining but also upgrading those products with
9:46
new features. And I also think it's fair to say that Creality has now trained us on their behaviors
9:52
to expect that no matter what we buy, there will likely be a new product before long
9:58
New products come out all the time, but again, historically, these new releases seem to divert
10:03
development from the machine we bought, say, just last year. So again, I think that's real value from
10:09
other brands whose products are in the spotlight for two to three years or more versus these which
10:15
only get one. And of course, with the Spark XI7, I could not, in good conscience, ignore how similar
10:21
this is to the a1 other creators have said exactly the same thing i think it clearly exists just to
10:28
directly compete with that product because visually i feel it's almost a carbon copy
10:33
just in reverse and it wasn't all negative there are positive elements that are called out
10:38
now i still don't dare to call these improvements because we genuinely don't know the long-term
10:45
reliability of these hardware changes and we won't until this thing hits the general public
10:49
end mass then give it a year and we'll get an indication of just how improved these differing
10:55
elements are and there are things i like like the cfs being enclosed that's a positive i like the
11:01
easy access to the filament path and cutter blade i called them out as great and i wish more brands
11:05
would do it and i actually think many people would prefer the device i wasn't able to show
11:10
which is the dual real automatic loader rather than a four real full color changing one especially
11:15
once they realize just how much waste is involved with color changing that dual loader is actually a
11:21
genius invention and they should have promoted it harder oh and i also like the larger bed and i do
11:27
genuinely like the rgb light i do i think it's cool and at the end i said even though my print
11:33
quality wasn't great i expect most users will get acceptable results once creality dials in the
11:39
profiles a bit better. That's common in my experience for Creality. Deliver first, fix later
11:46
And honestly, it's not unique to them. It's pretty much across the board in new printer releases
11:50
but it's most common in these mid-tier brands. And I also called out buggy behavior that I've
11:56
personally experienced across many Creality machines, behavior that is simply less common
12:01
with other brands that I've tested recently. And of course, outside the machine itself
12:06
i talked about the ecosystem including the lack of cross compatibility in terms of hardware and i
12:12
believe this is now the largest part of the value equation when looking at a 3d printer and i also
12:18
mentioned their messy lineup of machines and i got a bit of crap in the comments for this bit and i
12:22
accept that people are allowed contrasting views but let me clarify it creality currently has 16
12:28
fdm printers across four categories spark x the high seven flagship machines somehow and seven ender
12:35
machines with that lineup the spark x i7 the high and the ender 3v4 are in practical terms very
12:43
similar machines yet they use different core hardware components and different compatibility
12:48
rules where other brands have one platform and evolve it creality has three near identical
12:54
machines where others have one to me that fragments value it diverts brand focus from continual
13:01
improvement when compared to other brands and it confuses customers. Now I know there'll be people
13:06
watching thinking I'm just a Creality hater but why would I be that? I obviously want Creality to
13:12
sell printers. I've got a channel monetized by little more than affiliate commissions so of course
13:18
I could just run this channel by saying everything's amazing and try to do no more than push sales but
13:23
I never wanted to be that. I always wanted to be the channel that is honest with you about my
13:28
experience so you can make an informed and relative choice and I actually read a tweet reply
13:34
from Alan Mandick recently which sums it up perfectly because he said without money we can't
13:39
pay our bills today but without reputation we can't pay them ever which is why I believe transparency
13:45
matters above everything else so yeah I feel this brand critique is fair and if taken on board by
13:52
them with improvements put in place I believe that they would have a stronger market position
13:57
I believe that we as users would get a product with more value if not on par with their competitors
14:03
then at least be at an angle where they are competitive because right now I feel like it's
14:10
a differing element which damages them. Now Creality may even sell more printers than any
14:15
other brand but the thing is that only sounds like a win until you look at what that actually means
14:21
and what usually follows from it in the history of companies that have done this before. High unit
14:27
volume sales usually means you're very good at price pressure, distribution, and pulling in first
14:32
time buyers. It doesn't automatically mean that you're building trust, loyalty, or repeat customers
14:39
Many Creality video comment sections, not just mine, already show the warning signs. Endless people
14:44
saying things like my first printer was a Creality, followed immediately by and I'll never buy another
14:50
one That not brand strength that churn Volume can mask that for a long time but once experienced users mentally check out the decline is already baked in And we seen this pattern so many times before RIM is a textbook example BlackBerry
15:06
sold enormous numbers of devices and dominated enterprise, but they prioritized shipping more
15:12
units and more models whilst dismissing usability shifts, ecosystem cohesion, and long-term platform
15:18
trust. When they finally reacted, customers didn't just move on, they refused to come back
15:24
blackberry didn't slowly shrink the hardware business simply died saab is the automotive
15:30
parallel they didn't fail because nobody bought their cars they failed because cost cutting
15:34
platform sharing and quality compromises eroded trust while volume was still being pushed through
15:40
a shrinking niche once that reputation cracked sales volumes couldn't save them saab wasn't
15:46
reinvented or recovered the brand was shut down and kodak followed the same trap they sold vast
15:52
quantities of film and cameras and dominated their entire market for decades, but they optimised
15:58
around pushing volume in an ageing model instead of protecting long-term relevance and trust in
16:03
innovation. Even when they knew the market was changing, they clung to what still sold, and once
16:09
consumer confidence shifted, their scale didn't matter. Kodak survives as a name, but the company
16:15
that mattered collapsed. But the best ogue, by far, is Blockbuster. Blockbuster didn't lose
16:21
because Netflix had more features. And remember, they both competed in the physical media space first
16:27
Anyway, Blockbuster copied Netflix and in some areas even beat them on paper
16:32
Bigger catalogs, physical stores, so same day access, aggressive pricing, subscriptions, and even early streaming attempts
16:40
Does that sound familiar? Competitive pricing, AI features, available in more brick and mortar stores
16:46
and different locales. Yeah, similar. The problem wasn't features. it wasn't availability the problem was that netflix had a fundamentally stronger core simpler
16:56
usability clearer direction and a model built around convenience and trust once people experienced
17:03
that blockbuster's me too offerings just highlighted how clunky and confused the original experience
17:09
had become people didn't want netflix but from blockbuster they wanted netflix and that's the
17:16
danger of the path Creality are on. You can match features undercut on price and even win individual
17:22
checkboxes, but if the competitor's core experience is cleaner and more coherent, copying them doesn't
17:28
save you. It accelerates the loss of trust. Blockbuster sold more movies than Netflix
17:34
right up until it didn't. Volume is a lagging indicator. The real shift happens first in
17:40
sentiment and confidence exactly what most comment sections already show and when a brand becomes
17:46
everyone's first purchase but nobody's second that isn't dominance that's just delayed consequences
17:52
so yeah again whilst i may come across as anti-creality what i'm actually highlighting is a
17:58
potential poison in the core of their brand that could lead to a future where we simply don't have
18:04
them at all and none of us wants that do we? Anyway back to my Spark X video I also called out that
18:10
despite claims this is an easier printer to use it runs almost entirely the same UI and software as
18:16
other Creality machines with Creality Slicer still being in my opinion one of the weakest
18:22
orca forks on the market. So yeah I think that's a fair review. Praise the good, highlight the bad
18:28
you watch and decide if this is the machine you want. And initially my Creality rep agreed
18:33
they said it was a fair and honest take on the machine but big creality apparently they didn't
18:40
like it and because they didn't like it they tried via my rep to coerce me into changing it
18:45
so here's what happened next after the video went live i was told the review was honest and fair
18:51
no factual inaccuracies were raised no technical corrections were requested but then the problem i
18:57
was informed of was that the ending might get my rep in trouble and i'm like how why it was revealed
19:03
that this could prompt criticism rather than encourage sales and that it affected brand
19:09
reputation during a sensitive launch period. Now I need to be clear, at no point had I
19:15
agreed to make a promotional video. If I ever do them, it's rare and I'll tell you up front
19:21
this is not a review. So I refused to make changes. Then later, I was further asked to
19:27
remove specific remarks, with screenshots shown in isolation of the wider context I delivered them in
19:32
And I was also told doing so would help keep the door open for future collaboration
19:38
And I was told that leadership expects creators to be brand friendly
19:44
No, that's not feedback. That's editorial pressure. And when future access is tied to compliance, to me, that's coercion
19:55
And this was just the start. So I asked, had I made any factual errors
20:00
Where were they? I even retorted that if Creality didn't want to be directly compared to other brands
20:06
perhaps they should not have released a machine that was so directly comparable to another brand
20:11
I mean, this is so on the nose. Come on, Creality. Who are you trying to kid here
20:16
This isn't a simple case of every white bedslinger on the market is now an A1 clone
20:22
but considering they've put out the Ender 3 V3 and the Creality High in the same time the A1s
20:27
existed and with most of the changes here being ones that more closely emulate the A1 visually
20:34
at the very least this is the physical embodiment of that meme where you ask your mum for an A1
20:39
and she tells you that you've already got an A1 at home. So I refused to make changes again. But then
20:44
came the emotional pressure from my rep, saying things like, I'm sad, I feel disrespected
20:49
this is affecting me personally, I'm being questioned by leadership all day. Now I've got
20:54
to be honest I do appreciate that my rep is one person stuck in the middle here and my biggest
21:00
worry is that she could be bearing the brunt of all this fallout with Creality. So essentially I
21:06
feel like I'm seeing her get scapegoated with the responsibility being placed entirely on her
21:11
as one individual and I expect any response I get now to be along the lines of oh she was acting
21:18
alone, she was new, she said the wrong thing, lost in translation, didn't mean that, all of the
21:22
excuses and all of this will come despite her having incredible English literacy. She repeated
21:28
the points I'm bringing up here and everything I've seen leads me to infer that this attitude is
21:33
real and comes from deeper within the Creality hierarchy rather than one individual, especially
21:38
when I know other creators have received similar pressure around making exactly the same direct
21:44
comparisons to the A1. And the worst bit is, these attitudes actually add credibility to the exact
21:52
points I was making in my review of the Spark XI7. It seems like this is a printer from a company
21:59
that has become so large they've got too many chiefs, too many independent teams releasing
22:04
similar but inconsistent products which together devalue each other by adding confusion to a brand
22:11
that operates in an already confusing market. But back to the emotional pressure because I actually
22:16
had to digest this for some time. It did genuinely upset me and I was worried that I could have
22:21
caused hurt to this person Now we both should be professional first and this is where I think a bit of a line was crossed So if upset has been caused I am sorry I genuinely am But at the same time professionally nobody at Creality or any
22:36
company should be shifting that type of pressure onto any reviewer and expect them to rewrite a
22:42
published review just to protect internal optics or external ones for that matter. Emotional pressure
22:49
is beyond unprofessional. It's personally inappropriate for the type of relationship we should have. Now there's a couple of other bits that I need to be clear with you on. So first
22:59
she also said to me during this chat that I was very favorable to Creality as a brand when I spoke
23:04
to her in person at Formnext, which she inferred is why she decided to send me a printer. But
23:10
and I have a witness to this, I wasn't positive about Creality. I said I've got a fondness for
23:16
the brand due to my first printing experience being on a CR10, but I also told her she's got
23:22
a hard job because Creality releases too many products too quickly, doesn't support them for
23:27
long enough before releasing new machines, and the community pushes back hard against that. I said
23:33
plainly that Creality is not perceived as a high quality brand, which I've reiterated on a live
23:40
phone call with her later, and I also said if the company released fewer products and supported them
23:45
properly, they'd earn far more respect and more customers long term. But what worries me most is
23:52
their mindset because this bit tripped me. She suggested that other brands and you know who
23:59
only receive good reviews because of contracts in place and I've got to say this is deeply flawed
24:06
It's simply not true. At least for myself, I can say with 100% confidence that I am under no
24:12
agreement or obligation with any brand that I must provide a positive review. And if I ever had a
24:18
company try to uphold such a restriction, especially under any kind of threat, they'll get exactly
24:24
what's happening here. I will call it out publicly. But this type of thinking from her has come from
24:31
somewhere. She's only been at the company for about four months, and I believe she's only been in this
24:35
industry for the same amount of time. So if this is the mentality over there, then that is poisonous
24:41
because this allows leadership to excuse their own failures rather than recognize that other
24:47
brands do offer values that Creality doesn't, which once again brings me back to exactly what
24:53
I said was a problem in my review. That belief would explain why brand criticism is resisted
24:59
instead of learned from. But then the last bit, and the reason why this video is here
25:04
because I was deciding whether or not I should put this out, I checked my stats on the SparkX
25:10
video one day to see they'd been massively boosted and I mean a boost. This video was never going to
25:16
be a huge performer for me. It was climbing in at around 23,000 views then suddenly boom nearly 10,000
25:22
more overnight and I mean literally overnight from 6 p.m on January 12th to 6 a.m on January 13th
25:29
But whilst my views massively increased my watch time and subscriber count for this video
25:34
remained consistent, meaning they didn't trend up in correlation with views. So I'm thinking what's
25:40
happening here, and I had a bit of an idea. I checked my video sources, basically where my
25:46
views are coming from, and I found out that YouTube advertising is responsible for 40% of
25:52
this video's views. Specifically over the period in question where it boosted up, it was responsible
25:58
for almost 90% of views. Now YouTube is my job. Understanding metrics properly is a big part of
26:05
what I do now that this is my full-time gig and to be clear I don't run YouTube advertising on my
26:12
videos. So I need to explain what this is. Pretty much anyone can pay YouTube to promote a video to
26:18
a specific audience in a certain way such as I could say men interested in tech age 25 to 55
26:25
from this variety of countries who are interested in certain other channels and you can also say put
26:31
this video in recommended or up next or i believe even be videos that autoplay after the last one's
26:38
finished but you can also pick counter demographics so for this video let's just say assuming these
26:44
people won't watch it ladies aged 55 plus who are interested in gardening and again sorry if you're
26:51
55 plus a lady interested in gardening and also watch my channel but the group as a whole you see
26:58
what i'm saying the point is that latter selection all but guarantees nearly anyone who watches the
27:03
video will click off it immediately and that damages the statistics that youtube cares about
27:09
organically such as watch time and other engagement markers likes dislikes comments shares subscribers
27:16
and even this new hype button. And there is a general understanding amongst experienced YouTubers
27:21
that if you use these promotional tools the wrong way, you can effectively tank a video
27:28
for a time anyway. Unless those promotions are ongoing, which is prohibitively expensive
27:34
organic traffic will return after about a week or so after the promo ends, and things go back to
27:39
normal. And I make my videos to play the long game anyway, rather than prioritize immediate hype
27:44
like buy now FOMO all that crap so I'm not really that bothered but yes unsurprisingly from what I
27:52
see after that boost in traffic the steady climb I was on tapered off my video no longer appears
27:59
amongst the top suggested videos on YouTube when searching Spark X i7 which I learned by searching
28:05
that and when I did I also noticed some other channels some I've never heard of before with
28:10
significantly more views than I would even expect to see amongst the category of bedslingers in
28:16
general. But as I yze those videos further to get a view of the flavor that's being put out
28:21
it's often the more positive videos with the tens of thousands of views. And then I also
28:28
noticed something else. The engagement of these videos is incredibly low, to the point where
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promotion is almost certain. There are some pretty decently known ratios for engagement
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percentages versus views that indicate healthy organic traffic on videos. So I worked out a
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table to see how those videos compared. Now I'm not going to name with the intent to shame anyone
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here. Every creator is welcome to make content however they do. But there were three channels
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who were so overwhelmingly positive about this machine outperforming all other videos in terms
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of views, but with significantly below par engagement scores. Now the thing is, I can't ever
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know and therefore can't accuse anyone who has run these promotions on mine or anyone else's videos
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I can't be certain that these other videos were promoted. There's no proof. But again, just look
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at those engagement numbers against the baseline. The point here is purely to show that it appears
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to me something is happening and the pessimistic side of me infers what I think is obvious to most
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of you watching. Now I expect some viewers especially long-time Creality fans will see this
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as just me complaining but as I said I've got no ill will towards Creality products themselves
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I never have. I consider myself quite professional in what I do. The products are what they are
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mid-tier with the quality and support you should expect from any mid-tier brand
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The ecosystem is not there. that's also true of other brands and not of others it may matter to you it may not it may matter to
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you deeply the choice is yours as always but i'm going to call it out when i see it because it's a
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value difference worth consideration but this isn't even about me it's about you and what you deserve
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and no none of us deserve full insight into a company's business and how they choose to operate
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we don't deserve full transparency behind their decisions if this is how creality want to play
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the game so be it but my channel is built around the question of can we just stop pretending because
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I think what we all deserve is the ability to spend our money with a clear expectation of what
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we're going to get and I believe you deserve creators who have full editorial control when
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publishing content in the form of a review a review by nature has to be critical and you deserve that
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without brand pressure just because they don't like the outcome even when it's fair valid and true
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just because it could impact their sales in fact especially for that reason because to me the
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solution to these problems is actually much simpler than trying to make people change videos
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and that's for them to make better products and offer competitive features and i just want to
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finalize and show you how far back this goes let me show you this clip from teaching tech
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Michael is or was one of the most respected voices in this space and on his most recent video where he unfortunately discloses he's leaving YouTube he describes exactly the same behavior from Creality from years ago
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The same goes from my review a few years ago of the Creality CR10 Smart. This printer was abysmal and I said as much in my video and that prompted some pretty frank discussions back and forth and I took the chance in talking to some higher ups at the company to outline my problems with them
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The fact that they flooded the market with too many printers that these printers were unfinished untested that they relied on the community to do that side of the job with them The fact that they built their website on stolen IP the fact that they weren following licenses properly for open source software They were very
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polite, thanked me, but then cut me off for almost four years, not offering to send me anything
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after that point, which of course they're entitled to. But my point is I used to make a lot of videos
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on modifying Ender 3s and I used to cover a lot of products that had affiliate links and I profited
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from that but I was willing to cut that off completely if it meant telling the truth in that
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particular review and when the time came that Corelity got in contact and asked me to review
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their K2 plus rather than bend over backwards and try and rebuild those bridges I remained honest
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and pointed out some pretty glaring problems with that machine. I'm proud to say that I have maintained
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being honest being transparent the whole time on anything I've ever tested on the channel. Now as
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somebody who wants to fight for truth myself I am genuinely heartbroken that Michael is stepping
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away from his YouTube channel. He was an absolute pillar of this community and a true, a true bastion
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of truth and honesty and hearing so many of his experiences with printers often validated a lot
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of what I felt over the years. So I've got to say the 3D printing community just got considerably
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worse without him in it helping to protect us. But this brings me to my conclusion. Thank you
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for sticking with me. Right now, based on years of experience working with the brand, I don't believe
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and this is simply my belief, Creality has any real interest in taking constructive feedback on
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board and improving. Instead, their focus seems no more than on selling as many printers as possible
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and to do this, it seems they overtly attempt to manage perception by controlling who gets access
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if not doing more than that i don't want to directly accuse but there's a lot here that
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i've not experienced with any other brand i've worked with across any technology and the thing
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is i didn even say anything that bad i said the same thing about creality for years i said much worse about other brands and they still support me but anyway I feel that this approach to sales is misleading and it hurts consumers Now before I finish I need to be
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very clear about something. I am in no way saying that everyone now who reviews or promotes a
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Creality machine going forward is lying. I'm not saying that at all. I'm not saying people are
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dishonest because they choose to work with them. Please do not go out there calling creators names
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or accusing them of being shills or attacking people for making a different choice than I have
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Every creator has a full right to get to decide how they operate and do content full stop. And
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this isn't, this genuinely isn't some reverse psychology nonsense where I'm saying don't do
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this but secretly meaning do and put other channels down. That is not what this is. I've
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actually had another creator I used to respect do that to me in the past and I cannot overstate
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how devastating that was. I would not wish it upon anyone. That nearly made me quit this gig
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entirely. So I'm saying this clearly and directly, please don't do that to anyone else. If you
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disagree with someone, please do so. Disagree with me. I always say just disagree respectfully
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argue your points calmly, and always, always be open to the idea, as I am here, that you could
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be wrong. Just never resort to petty name calling or personal attacks because if you're trying to
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make a good argument that weakens it immediately. So what this situation has given me though is
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something I've never had before with any other brand I work with. A live direct example of a
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company applying pressure when criticism is inconvenient and because of that there is now
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only one way forward. I did ask my rep if I could have a meeting with her manager but this has been
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dragged out and for someone who told me they had a whole day with managers asking about my video
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they now can't seem to lock down one manager for a specific meeting one day in the future
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over the last five days and I also don know but based on what I was told I now expect that Creality will no longer me because I not brand friendly enough for them But at the end of the day I don work for them or any brand
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I work for you, the viewer. So rather than wait in limbo for them to make the call, I'm making it
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From here on, I cannot in good conscience continue to work with Creality or any of their subsidiary companies, the Laser Team or PioCreate
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I will continue to review Creality machines, honestly and fairly. I'm not going to put them down for this
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This is my choice. I will be genuine with you about the machines I touch because that's what you deserve
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And I'm going to do that by purchasing them myself. I am fortunate enough that I can do that
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And that's entirely thanks to your support that you give to this channel by using my affiliate links, becoming members and donating things like super thanks
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But yes, this does mean that I probably won't be among the first to publish Creality reviews anymore
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But I can promise you this. I will always, always be amongst the most honest
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And I'll do this because despite all my tongue in cheek jokes to keep things lighthearted, I am a professional
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and because I actually do want Creality to perform better in this market
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I want to love them again. I want them to sell more printers. Isn't that what they want too
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With their size, their reach and their resources, they should be dominating this space
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And I genuinely believe that what I say in my reviews already contains at least a part of the answer as to why they aren't
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So good luck Creality. Thank you everyone for watching. Thanks to our members
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Until next time, Fonhamer out