It depends on the type of person you are. Those machines you reference are in a class of machine where you are likely to have to put a lot of work into them to get them running reliably and probably more money than if you just bought a better printer from the get go. They are machines to recommend people who want the 3D Printer to be their hobby rather than designing and printing stuff.

If that doesn't sound like you, just buy a used Bambu or Prusa even if you need to delay the purchase to save up longer.

If its your first printer I would not go for a second-hand one. There are so many ways you can subtly mess up a printer and if you don't know your way around printers yet, then it's quite hard to fix all that.

Considering you can get a Bambulab A1 mini which does everything out of the box and works better out of the box than an Ender 3 after months of upgrades.

A creality anything shouldn't be your first printer. I own two creality printers.

You can get a new Sovol SV06 for less than $200. That worked very well out of the box compared to my older Ender 3. Prusaslicer also has a good profile for it. I don't care for Cura slicer as much. Enders are of an older generation of printers that I will personally avoid just because of the legacy of having to tinker with them just to get them to work. The opposite end is the Bambu where "it just works" except it doesn't always and it's not as easy to fix and it doesn't play well with third parties. Sovol is a good starter printer that I'd had even better bed adhesion with over Prusa MK4Ss at work.

I picked up a used ender 3 V3 se off of marketplace for $60 and had to repair it. Since then it's been printing 10x better than my anycubic kobra neo. I think it comes down to slicer profiles in orca slicer. The ender 3 was a wildly popular printer compared to the kobra. Cheap printers cut corners but can still print good. If you're not mechanically inclined then don't get a cheap printer.

Lots of Bamu fanboys in here, and don't get me wrong, those print with minimal hassle and have great customer service, but you are selling your soul, always on internet connection, bambu account required, every print you ever try sent to the cloud.

I recently got a creality K1, refurbished, super cheap, awesome machine, zero tinkering. and creality just gives me root access at the click of a single button so I actually own the hardware.

Before that I had a super cheap no-name bedslinger with no auto-anything, and taking that apart multiple times a week was terrible but also very educational to actually understand the hobby

Don't believe the marketing, there are viable options.

I've always heard "if you want to print things, buy Bambu. If you want to fix your printer, but an ender 3"

I have a CR-10 clone and maybe because it's a clone, but I now have to calibrate it before every print. It was good when it was brand new but quickly forced me to learn troubleshooting.

I have a CR-10s that I bought used. I asked the seller to ensure that it worked before I bought it. Most of my problems I had with the printer are due to me trying to make it print faster. If I had just downloaded Cura and used the default profiles it would have served me well.

Learning how to level a bed is probably the most significant skill you will need. It's not too hard.

I went from the Ender 3 v3, to the Anycubic Kobra 3, and the difference is so wide, or makes it hard to recommend the Ender. With the Ender I could do small simple models, but anything with multiple parts were hard to dial in tolerances. The anycubic allows me to do multiple days of printing and be assured all the parts will come together. I now also get error handling so a tangle or running out of filament won't ruin the job. It even resumes after power loss. I know it's not in your budget, but the difference is very noticeable.

Not a mistake, I've got an ender 3 and a cr10. Both are fine, keep your expectations realistic and calibrate each axis, especially the extruders. Use PLA, consider getting a new build plate if your prints won't stick. I recommend flashing firmware on the ender 3 unless you know what was loaded onto it last, doesn't have to be fancy firmware just something you know for sure is configured for your printer. A cr10 should probably get firmware as well but I never loaded new firmware on mine and the controller is older so I'm not sure if it's a good idea.

Don't forget the cost of filament, if you print a lot you may spend more on filament in a year that your printer budget.

Lots of comments here, plenty of information for you. I'll add to the pile that I started playing with my buddies stock ender 3, fought it often, lots of tweaking and configuring.

Then I got my own ender 3v2, and fought it less, but still needs tinkering. Usually though I can fire it up and print small stuff without touching it. I print infrequently these days, so the procedure usually involves wiping the dust off the bed first. But it works well enough for my needs.

I tend to get into hobbies for awhile and then back off, so I'm glad I didn't spend more. And really, while $300 is a lot of money in many ways, in some ways it's not so much. I'm glad I have a printer, it is occasionally highly useful. But I'm glad I don't have a $600-1000 printer. Personally 🤷‍♂️ but that's just me.

I'd go for a Prusa printer, they're highly maintainable and easy to upgrade. Definitely not Bambu - they're a closed source shitty company