FOKOOS 3D Printers reached out to us and offered to send us a free printer in exchange for an honest review. We had it sent to our resident FDM printing expert, Calrais.mkx, so she could give us the insider info on this relatively unknown printer!

Odin-5 F3 Highlights:

• Comes with everything you need to start printing right away, including a microSD card and a decent amount of filament. This allows for more than just a test print.
• Fast and easy setup, comes almost entirely pre-built.
• Dual z and y-axes is great for minimal wobble.
• Touchscreen is very clear and navigation is easy.
• Direct feed to the hotend means less chance of clogging. And there’s a button for feeding or retracting the filament for ease of switching and loading. No more trying to pull the filament out by hand and having it snap off.
• FOKOOS slicer easy to use.
• Biggest con is the hefty price tag ($350USD at the time of this review), especially compared to better-known models like Creality’s Ender 3.
• It’s an FDM printer, so you’ll never get the same kind of resolution you’d get from resin.

Printer Review

One of the best things about the Odin-5 F3 is how quickly and easily you can get started just out of the box. Overall, we were really impressed by the packaging and build quality for this printer. It definitely has a premium feel to go with the premium price tag. Since it comes mostly pre-assembled, so all you have to do is plug in a couple cables and put in 4 bolts to start printing. The folding design means that you can also stow it with just as little effort. This is great if you live in a small space or need to move your printer often. The FOKOOS slicer is similar to Cura, is easy to navigate, and comes with presets for the printer. Just choose the correct model and pop in the included filament to start printing!

The printer does not have auto-levelling, though it does have a levelling feature in the menus. You will have to adjust the knobs yourself, but the printer will move the bed into the correct positions for you. The bed size is also slightly bigger at 235mm x 235mm (approximately 9.25″ x 9.25″), with 250mm height (9.84″). This is about 3/4″ bigger on each side than the Ender3 that we were using before. 

But enough with the specs! How well does it print?

Here is a 54mm scaled figure printed with 0.1mm layer height. It looks pretty good! Obviously will need some cleanup, but considering how easy it was to just get this print, I’m not complaining. The white filament performed really well and you can definitely see the difference that the dual y and z axis makes on layer lines. I’m personally a fan of dual z-axis on Resin printers as well. 

 Here’s a much larger print at 0.2mm layer height. You can see that there’s minimal stringing and the details are still coming out quite nicely. 

At 0.2mm layer height you can see some lines on the surface, but for some larger objects, this might not be much of a concern for you. 

Overall we found the experience of using this printer far superior to our old Ender 3. Calrais previously had constant issues with bed levelling, the print coming detached from the bed and becoming spaghetti, filament clogs, breakage… the list goes on. So far, it’s just been smooth sailing with the Odin-5 F3. Calrais is now using it as her main printer because of how easy and reliable it is! 

Some of the Amazon reviews have detailed some issues that we didn’t experience. For example, one reviewer said that their MicroSD and adapter broke immediately, and that the machine had a gap that the card slipped into. Calrais has been using the printer for almost 2 months now, with the included MicroSD and adapter, and hasn’t had any issues there. Another reviewer detailed a string of bad machines which seemed to have manufacturing issues. This hasn’t been our experience, as thankfully the printer has been working flawlessly out of the box for the last 2 months. We’ll definitely update this review if we find an issue though!

We tried testing the printer with a different filament, and the results were a bit mixed. There were some areas of strange layer jankyness with this cheap filament, but we’re inclined to believe it’s the fault of the filament rather than the printer:

You can see it most on the bottoms of the nodules on the chin of this model. When we switched back to the white filament that came with the printer, this issue went away. 

Final Thoughts

So is it worth it to get this printer? Calrais thought it’d be a great printer for both experienced and beginner 3d printers, especially when it comes to larger, longer prints. This is because the dual z and y-axes, meaning you’ll have less chance of a sudden wobble ruining your print partway. The only con is that the layer lines can be a bit more visible than the Ender 3. But with the huge reduction in headaches and failed prints, Calrais is sticking with this model and leaving her Ender 3 as a backup. 

Would I personally choose this over a resin printer? No. For the same price, you can get a very decent resin printer with stunning resolution. However, resin printers have various safety precautions that must be taken, and not everyone has a suitable space to set one up safely. Some people are sensitive or allergic to chemicals in the resin, which makes them unable to handle it. Or, some people want to print large scale props or prototypes with plastic, which is more durable/less brittle than most of the common resins available right now.  For those people, the Odin-5 F3 is a decent option to look into when considering an FDM printer.

You can purchase the FOSOOK Odin-5 F3 from their Amazon store: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NDM71Q6/ref=tsm_1_fb_lk

Not sure you want to buy it? Check out their Facebook Group and see what their users are saying! https://www.facebook.com/groups/fokoos

If you liked the 3d prints featured in this post, check out our collections here: https://cobramode.com/collections