What is the Bambu P1S Combo and is it worth buying

The Bambu P1S Combo is a Bambu Lab P1S 3D printer bundled with the AMS Lite four-colour material system. It is the multi-colour version of the P1S, sold as one box at a lower price than buying the printer and AMS separately.

That is the short answer. The longer answer is below if you are weighing it up against a P1P, an X1 Carbon, or just trying to work out whether the AMS is worth it for what you print.

What you actually get in the box

The P1S Combo ships with the following:

• One P1S printer, fully enclosed, with a 256 x 256 x 256 mm build volume
• One AMS Lite, the four-spool open-frame multi-material unit
• A starter spool of filament, usually a small reel of PLA
• The PTFE tubing and buffer that links the AMS Lite to the printer
• The usual nozzle wipe, glue stick, hex keys, and spare parts kit

The AMS Lite is the open one with four arms holding spools outwards. It is not the enclosed box-shaped AMS that comes with the X1 Carbon. Same idea, different shape. The Lite is cheaper to make and easier to load, but you cannot stack them and it does not protect filament from humidity.

What the P1S is on its own

The P1S is Bambu's mid-range CoreXY printer. Compared to the P1P, which is the open-frame model, the S adds:

• Glass front door and side panels for a fully enclosed chamber
• Auxiliary part-cooling fan
• Chamber temperature sensor (read-only, no heater)
• Activated carbon filter for fume control

Enclosure matters if you want to print ABS, ASA, or polycarbonate without warping. Open-frame printers can do small ABS parts, but anything wider than a coffee cup will lift at the corners as it cools. The P1S is the cheapest Bambu machine that handles those engineering materials properly.

It does not have a lidar nozzle scanner, AI failure detection, or a full-colour touchscreen. That is what you pay extra for on the X1 Carbon. The P1S has a small monochrome LCD and a low-resolution chamber camera that records timelapses but cannot spot spaghetti before it happens.

Why people buy the Combo instead of the printer alone

The AMS Lite adds roughly a third to the price of the printer, and the appeal is obvious. Four spools loaded at once, automatic switching mid-print, four-colour models without manually swapping filament every two minutes.

The catch is that multi-colour printing wastes filament. Every colour change purges the old material into a small extruded plug the printer flicks out. A four-colour Benchy can purge more plastic into waste than it uses for the model itself. Bambu Studio shows the waste figure in the slicer; once you see it, you start designing parts to minimise colour switches.

If you mainly print engineering parts in one colour at a time, the AMS Lite is not essential. It still has one genuinely useful trick though. Load two spools of the same colour and the printer switches to the second when the first runs out. That alone saves a lot of failed overnight prints.

P1S Combo vs the X1 Carbon Combo

The X1C Combo costs roughly double. What you get for the extra money:

• Lidar-assisted first-layer scan and flow calibration
• AI camera that pauses the print if it detects spaghetti
• Hardened steel hotend as standard (the P1S ships with stainless; the hardened nozzle is a separate purchase)
• Full-colour touchscreen
• The enclosed AMS rather than the AMS Lite
• Slightly better chamber sealing

If you are printing carbon-fibre-filled or glass-fibre-filled materials regularly, the hardened hotend matters. Those fillers grind a regular brass or stainless nozzle to nothing within a few kilograms. You can add a hardened nozzle to a P1S, but you cannot bolt on lidar.

For hobby use, the P1S Combo is the better-value buy. For a small business printing functional parts every day, the X1C usually earns its price back in fewer failed prints.

P1S Combo vs a P1P with AMS Lite

The P1P is the open-frame version of the same printer. You can buy a P1P with an AMS Lite (Bambu sells that as the P1P Combo) and add the enclosure panels later, since Bambu sells the upgrade kit. By the time you have done that, you are within a small margin of the P1S Combo price. If you already know you want the enclosure, buy the P1S Combo from the start. The factory build is tidier than the retrofit and the door hinge geometry is better.

What it is good at, and what it is not

It handles PLA, PETG, PLA-CF, ABS, and ASA well out of the box. It is quiet for a CoreXY, though the part fan still whines. You can start a print and walk away. Four-colour models work fine if you accept the filament waste.

It is not the right tool for polycarbonate or nylon at high temperatures. The chamber is not actively heated, so you will fight warping on large parts. The AMS Lite is open to the room, so nylon and PETG soak up moisture if you leave spools loaded for days. And the firmware is locked down compared to a Voron or a Prusa. You cannot easily swap to Klipper without losing features.

What goes wrong, and what we see come in for repair

The P1S is a reliable machine, but a handful of faults turn up often enough to be predictable. The extruder gear can grind into the PTFE feed tube after heavy use. The AMS Lite stepper drivers can fail after a lot of multi-material switching and need a logic-board repair. The hotend thermistor wires fatigue where they flex with the print head, and we have re-soldered several. The chamber camera ribbon cable kinks against the door frame and goes dark.

These are mostly fixable without sending the printer back to Bambu, provided the warranty has expired or the fault is not covered. If you are still in warranty, contact Bambu first. Opening the machine yourself voids the cover.

When to mail it in

If your P1S or AMS Lite is out of warranty and giving you grief, whether that is extruder grinding, the AMS refusing to switch, a dead chamber camera, thermistor errors, or a motherboard that will not boot, we can take a look. Email us first so we can confirm we have or can source any parts your specific fault needs. Pack it well; the original boxes are ideal if you kept them. Most repairs go back out within a few working days once we have the printer and any donor parts in hand. Diagnostics and a quote come first, and nothing gets touched until you have agreed the price. Drop us a line via our contact page.