Lots of people are under the impression you have to spend a lot of money on filament to get good results. Not true. There is little to no correlation between filament cost and the resulting print quality.
Good video with lots of good information. YMMV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjhW2NiILZc
Yup. I’ve used a lot of types of filament, and have to agree: Cost of filament is not a reliable indicator of quality.
I asked a guy on Ebay what the difference was between his regular PLA and his PREMIUM PLA and he straight up told me that it’s just the cost and there wasn’t any difference in quality… What? It was literally just $5 more expensive and labeled as “premium”.
Not surprising at all.
Hatchbox and Inland filaments showed me that low cost filament can be accurate and dependable…
My understanding is that Inland is actually re-branded eSun. eSun is generally considered comparable with Hatchbox.
Did not know that about inland, i’ve used eSun as well with no issues, though it is a bit more expensive than inland.
Polymaker filaments do diffrence, they feel and perform diffrent. But from performance point of view the cost diffrence do not worth. For PETG the cheap EU made that I got 17euro/kg is way better tha ColorFabb co-poliester (aka pet/petg).
Most filament brands have everything produced by a larger OEM, the biggest ones are probably Esun and Dutch Filaments. Many of the “standard” PLA etc. types even are just straight whitelabel products, so it makes sense that they will have very little difference in performance.
That being said, some of the more highly modified materials (PLA+, PC-ABS etc) do see significant changes in performance.