ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS
| 3D FDM Printer | 500mm/s |
ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS, one of the newest 3D FDM printer from ELEGOO.
The ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS is part of the fresh new releases in the 4th generation of the Neptune series along with the ELEGOO Neptune 4 Max, ELEGOO Neptune 4 Pro and non-Pro.
The ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS sits as one of the two high-tier models, being a slightly smaller sibling of the ELEGOO Neptune 4 Max.
Unlike the ELEGOO Mars 4 Ultra that we reviewed some time ago, the ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS is not a MSLA 3D printer but a 3D FDM printer, meaning that this machine will work and print PLA/PETG/ABS/TPU/Nylon Filaments and not liquid resin.
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ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS Review
Tests & Scores
ScoresELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS Scores
- Accessories - 8.75/108.8/10
- Assembly - 8.5/108.5/10
- Design - 9.75/109.8/10
- Display Screen - 9.75/109.8/10
- Operation & Control - 10/1010/10
- Construction & Build - 10/1010/10
- Connectivity - 10/1010/10
- Versatility - 10/1010/10
- Performance - 10/1010/10
- Print Quality - 10/1010/10
- Power Consumption - 8.75/108.8/10
- Durability - 10/1010/10
- Software - 8.75/108.8/10
- Features - 10/1010/10
- Tech & Specs - 10/1010/10
- Value for Money - 10/1010/10
Summary
✅ Fast printing
✅ Large printing capability
✅ Quality of prints
✅ Wired/wireless
✅ Rugged build
✅ Touch screen
✅ Value for money
❌ The RJ telephone-alike connectors of the screen might be fragile if frequently connected and disconnected
CONCLUSION
The ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS offers a phenomenal bang for buck by its massive printing volume capacity and groundbreakingly fast speeds, yet with an honest and accessible retail price.
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A
ACCESSORIES & PACKAGING
4.5/5
The ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS comes inside a large box with plenty of foam protection that will grant that your machine arrives in pristine condition to your home.
Inside you will get:
• All section to be assembled
• Assembly screws
• Spool holder
• Filament detector
• Extruder/head
• Screen
• Cables
• WiFi Antenna
• Alen keys
• 2x screw drivers
• Extra nozzle
• Zip ties
• USB Udisk
• 512MB microSD card
• MicroSD card reader
D
DESIGN
4.75/5
The ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS has a general aesthetic that gives it a “pro” vibe with a clean and elegant design that does not result in any tacky nor overcrowded looks.
The printer has a combination of black, space grey and pearled blue metallic colors across the different elements of the machine.
The machine comes with a spool holder that gets screwed to the top frame of the z-axis; you can slide it and set it freely in any place of the top frame (either centered or to a side). Right beneath the filament spool holder you will see a floating rectangular case, this is a special sensor that detects is the filament runs out while printing, informing immediately to the printer to pause the current printing process; thus, avoiding to ruin your print and allowing users to replace the spool with a new one and continue printing.
Moreover, the printer is wisely designed with a 24-LED light strip/bar running all across the top frame and an additional dual LED light on the nozzle extruder section.
Both are bright and do an exceptional job illuminating the printing work and bed without needing to do some DIY Frankenstein adaptions of an external lighting system – you can manually force any/each to be either on or off.
The printer dimensions are: 533x517x638mm with an effective printing size of 320x320x385mm; making it a 3D printer that can vastly surpass the printing volume of most 3D printers on the market.
AS
ASSEMBLY
4.25/5
The ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS comes partially preassembled, with the main bed and structures being already put together from factory but still remaining several steps to fully assemble it.
Unlike what happened while reviewing the IKIER K1 PRO MAX, all preassembled screws are well tightened from factory and did not need any further tightening.
Overall, the assembly of this 3D printer is not overly complicated but is neither the fastest one to complete.
If you have experience assembling laser, CNC, resin and 3D machines you will not be challenged by this build; instead, if this will be your 1st build, take your time and read all instructions carefully – a full assembly video is included with the bundled UDisk.
DS
DISPLAY SCREEN
4.75/5
The ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS includes a large 4.33″ color display screen that is touch sensitive. The screen attaches to the dedicated holder through a quick release magnetic system placed on the right edge of the machine.
The display is bright and sharp with a friendly UI that reads easily by providing intuitive menus/settings and clear fonts.
While printing, the display will give you live information of:
• X/Y/Z-axis coordinates
• Remaining printing time
• Printing progress in 3-digit percentage
• Elapsed printing time
• Nozzle/extruder temperature
• Bed temperature
• Live speed
• Speed boost adjustment in 3-digit percentage
• Extrusion boost adjustment in 3-digit percentage
• Preview of the printing project (if available)
In addition to the live information being displayed, you will have access to LED lighting control, pause/stop/halt printing process and live printing settings adjustments including:
• Printing speed
• Nozzle temperature
• Bed temperature
• Flow speed
• Fans speeds
• Filament load/unload
• Z-axis offset
• Filament detector on/off
As a standalone operation you will also see a preview of your 3D design when navigating through the sliced printing designs with the estimated time of printing and all the detailed information seeing while printing in all other modes.
The only drawback of the screen might be the less rugged cable connectors ends used that has the style of an RJ11 telephone line connector. The connector plugs firmly in place but if you are intending to connect and disconnect the screen from the machine, the plastic tab of the RJ11 could risk to break.
OC
OPERATION & CONTROL
5/5
The display screen mentioned above is also one of the main control systems of the printer.
The printer can be fully controlled through the display screen, through a 3D slicer/printing software on your computer (like CURA) or through the network interface from fluidd – this last one is controlled through your web browser by accessing the IP of the printer (after configuring the network connection of the printer)
Also, you can adjust the parameters and configuration of your printing while the printing job is being done; allowing hot-live modification of speeds, temperatures, axis positioning, lighting, vents, etc.
When used as a standalone printer you will be able to navigate, preview, set and print the files in your USB disk connected to the printer – the UI of the display allows navigation of folders and subfolders in the Udisk.
CB
CONSTRUCTION & BUILD
5/5
The ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS is a very rugged 3D printer with solid metal construction.
Every structural section of the printer is made of hefty aluminum and steel, including all axis profiles, frame, rods, bed assembly, etc.
To reinforce the tall z-axis and avoid any wobbly problems, the ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS has 2 supplementary robust rods that act as a structure reinforcement and stabilizer for the arc-structure.
Moreover, the heating bed has a PEI magnetic platform to optimize adhesion and removal of the prints.
The only sections made of plastic are some ending caps, the screen holder, the display frame/case, filament spool holder, extruder outer case and filament detector case.
The brand did not only focus on the outer and frame build of the machine; all internals and accessories of the printer are equally well-built with quality components that include:
• Nozzle kit with ceramics and brass elements
• Dual-gear direct extruder
• 5x fans that includes 2×4015 ball bearing cooling fans, 2×6025 ball bearing blower fans and a 3010 ball bearing fan
• Aluminum throat pipe
• POM guide wheels
CON
CONNECTIVITY
5/5
The ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS offers both wired and wireless connection and operation of the machine has; all I/O connectors are placed on the front and right edges of the machine.
On the front you will find:
• USB-C: to use and control the printer through your computer
• USB-A: to use the machine as a standalone machine by plugging in a USB disk with the files to be printed already sliced and configured
• RJ connector: used only for the connection with the screen
On the side you can find:
• RJ45: net connector to make the printer available on your network through an ethernet connection
• WiFi antenna: enabling wireless access to send files and fully control the machine through your computer connected on the same WiFi network
The network interface and UI offered by fluidd will give full unrestricted access to all the settings and parameters of the printer, including also elements such as a live console, printing queue, live thermals statistics/graphs, macros, gcode previews, printing jobs history with full files details, etc.
P
PERFORMANCE
4.5/5
The ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS is a perfect example of how much the 3D printing world has evolved since 2015 in the early times of the Prusa i3 and the 2017 ultra-budget Anet A8; making both look like ancient steam trains running on coal.
The ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS runs on a Klipper motherboard/firmware with an ARM 64-bit 1.5GHz quad-core CPU. The powerful guts of the printer allows it to reach up to 500mm/s speeds for printing and 12000mm/s acceleration with dedicated acceleration sensors for the X/Y axis.
If you want to take full advantage of the groundbreaking speeds of the ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS, you will prefer to get a couple of Rapid PLA filament spools.
The ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS has an advanced auto bed leveling system with a whopping 121 leveling measuring in a 11×11 matrix, working and calibrating fully automatically.
If you are new to 3D FDM printers, you need to know that accurate leveling is one of the fundamental keys to obtain accurate and quality prints; therefore, take your time to carefully adjust and tune your printer, bed and leveling.
To ensure printing precision and to be able to push the crazy fast printing speeds, the ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS is equipped with a gigantic dual fan module that emits an even air flow that covers the full bed width with equally distributed ventilation – 3 additional fans are placed directly on the extruder head module.
With all the printing tests the bed of the ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS was always able to provide secure plate adhesion with no single print getting knocked down while printing, wrapped nor getting loose from the bed – of course, as far as you set your bed temperatures right, leveling/calibration and you apply any brim or rafts when needed. The PEI coating of the heating bed did not only provide excellent adhesion but also allowed an easy removal of the finished prints without risking to break it.
Furthermore, throughout all tests there were no traces of clogging and stringing.
On top of that, thanks to dedicated controls of the extruder load/unloading settings through the in-menu of the display screen, the ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS provided an easy and trouble-free switching of the filament spools. Through our tests we switched back and forth 4 different filament spools, taking no more than 10 seconds to have a new filament in place, loaded and ready to print.
It is fair to highlight that the Elegoo printer will default at 250mm/s printing speeds unless you manually change it through the in-menu or through the slicing software.
PC
PRINT QUALITY
5/5
A standard Benchy print with all settings and options as they come right-out-of-the-box took 17 minutes to finish.
Below you can see examples of the Benchy print done with the 3D printer in Standard Mode vs Sport Mode.
The following spiraling vase by alecs_form was printed on a single color with a total printing time of 1 hour and a size of 220mmx110mm (height x width)
To test the full printing height of the ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS, we proceeded to enlarge the model of the previously printed vase to nearly the maximum printing capability of the printer; the print was done in a multi-color print taking a total of 2:10 hours without needing to push too much the speeds of the printer – the final print size had a height of 380mm (just 5mm below the max print size of the ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS)
Also we tested the printing area capability of the bed with 2 large designs made by mishkin2.
To see a finer printing detail, we printed the Batman bust and Wonder Woman by Eastman with a 0.16mm layer height; the total printing times were 83 minutes and 270 minutes.
PC
POWER CONSUMPTION
4.5/5
This ELEGOO 3D printer showed a power consumption ranging from as little as 4.8W when idle and up to 430W (approx.) when pre-heating of the bed and extruder was being done.
While printing on fast speeds with temperatures as high as 220°C for the extruder and 60°C on the bed, the printer showed a consumption oscillating from 115W (approx.) to 250W (approx.)
SW
SOFTWARE
4.5/5
The ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS includes a custom version of CURA branded and tailored to work out of the box with ELEGOO printers. As of today, the ELEGOO version of CURA is at v4.8 while the latest version of CURA is at v5.5.
With the ELELGOO CURA software you will be able to prepare, set and slice all your projects without limitations.
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ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS Technical Specifications
• Product model: Neptune 4 Plus
• LCD: 4.33-inch
• Slicer Software: Elegoo CURA
• Technology: FDM
• Layer Thickness: 0.01-0.2mm
• Printing Speed: up to 500mm/s
• Build Volume: 320x320x385mm
• Languages: Chinese English Japanese Dutch Korean French German Russian Italian Spanish Turkish Portuguese
• Connectivity: USB-C/USB-A/Ethernet/WiFi
• Printer Dimensions: 533x517x638mm
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ELEGOO Neptune 4 PLUS
