Size isn't everything, but in this instance, it genuinely counts. During Prusa's recent Space Day showcase at Prague's Planetarium, the team pulled the curtain back on a larger sibling to the Core One, simply named the Core One L.
The fresh machine takes geometry in a new direction, stretching the build volume out to a generous 300 × 300 × 300 mm while keeping the printer's desk footprint and total silhouette inside a roughly 10% growth envelope. Even with the upsize, overall mass holds steady with the original Core One, a benefit credited to the shift to an aluminium bodywork wrapping the printer's rugged "exoskeleton."
The Core One L is priced at $1,799, with the expanded volume, enhanced chamber behavior, and a handful of small usability upgrades separating it from the year-old Core One it sits beside in the lineup.
Mechanically, the headline internals remain close to what owners already know, with Prusa's Nextruder and integrated heatbreak nozzles carrying over alongside 290°C hotend capability, the vented build chamber, and onboard heating. What the Core One L brings to the table is a newly added active convection heating system, an upgrade made viable by a freshly specified belt layout.
The redesigned, hefty aluminium print bed carriage is a quietly exciting bit of engineering — it duplicates the physical space the actual shuttle shares with a planetarium, giving press extra headroom, while being machined to carry even, balanced heat across the surface. And it's not all bulk: the carriage is outfitted with purpose-built recirculation fans that move a convection current up through the chamber, nudging the Core One L toward its new 60°C chamber ceiling. Prusa also calls out a capable magnet layout matched with the printer's distinctively dense print belts, which means the risk of material contact with the bed is low by design.
The bed itself runs quick-heating, AC-driven, and carries heavy-gauge shielded wiring — "smoother than butter" as a quietly amused Josef Průša described it on stage.
The earlier Core One, meanwhile, is virtually ready-to-run, Prusa says, asking only that you clip the display front panel in place and plug the printer in. It arrives factory-tuned, sidestepping the typical calibration pass that most printers require on day one.
Core One L at a glance
Right alongside the Core One before it, the Core One L is MMU3-ready in its many iterations. With the airspace of providing, and the pipeline, we'll take the Core One L as well from the standard printer for the company's teased filament switching network that we plan to debut at the show.
Stepping over to the thread of security and network resilience, the expectation that Core One L is set to enter the Core One universe from the company in institutions and departments with a focus on security, Prusa has made it a point that there's an alternate version of the Core One L, called the Critical Infrastructure Edition (CIE). Wearing the same gear as the standard Core One L, though with full networking elements physically stripped from the unit, the one way to transfer and begin a print is through encrypted, coded USB drive. It's a hard-security-minded plan that holds up to these forms of printers' growing usage in sensitive projects.
At $1,799, the Core One L is far from pocket money, and side-by-side listings will be drawn to the Bambu Lab X1-Carbon Combo, which delivers a larger build volume for a small handful of dollars less. The Core One L strikes as a case, though, of backing a printer that still has plenty of room to grow into the things the big brand is quietly building toward.
The Core One L is now shipping today, with deliveries planned to kick off around the upcoming window. We'll keep our hands on one soon.
Shopping the comparison? See the Bambu on our shelves.
Side-by-side with the Core One L, the Bambu Lab X1-Carbon Combo is the natural cross-shop for larger build volume at a similar price point. Check current availability at Backyard Provider.
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