There are sensible reasons for buying a EufyMake E1. You could start an Etsy store, sell personalised mugs and coasters, print signs for local businesses or spend your evenings turning cheap blanks into products carrying significantly healthier profit margins.
Nobody has ever accused me of being sensible before so I haven’t really been doing any of those things.
Instead, I have been using a UV printer costing the best part of £2,000 to print bits for old computers, decorate cases for tiny PCs and make my games room increasingly resemble the utopia I would have designed for myself when I was 14 if somebody had given me access to technology from the future rather than that dot matrix printer I used to print our ASCII images of naked ladies on when my parents weren’t looking.
The EufyMake E1 is one of the most creatively liberating bits of technology I have used in years. If I can create an image on my computer, there is a decent chance I can now put that image onto metal, plastic, wood, acrylic, ceramic or practically anything else I can persuade to fit inside the machine.
That has totally changed the way I approach projects. Rather than searching the internet for the right case, sign, badge or piece of artwork, I increasingly find myself thinking, “Feck it, I’ll just make one.”
There is, unfortunately, another side to the E1. The ink is expensive. It also uses a surprising amount of it even when you aren’t printing = yes, read that again, it’s not a typo. Raised prints can devour white and gloss cartridges. The cleaning system introduces another consumable capable of stopping the printer completely in its tracks, and I have had the particularly infuriating experience of being told I need a replacement cleaning cartridge only to discover EufyMake doesn’t have one available. Nice.
Then there is the smell. I can smell it now, as it’s printing while I work on this review. This was a bad idea. I’m not sure how long I have left on this planet, but I can’t imagine this is extending my time here.
This is a machine I love using, but it is also one that periodically reminds me that UV printing is traditionally a commercial technology for a reason.
What actually is the EufyMake E1?The E1 is a desktop UV printer. Rather than putting ink onto paper and waiting for it to dry, it deposits UV-reactive ink onto an object and cures it almost immediately using ultraviolet light.
The important difference is the range of things you can print on. EufyMake officially lists more than 300 compatible materials, including metal, wood, acrylic, ceramic, stone, glass, canvas, leather and various plastics. The standard flatbed accommodates projects up to 330 x 420mm, while resolution reaches 1440 DPI.
That doesn’t adequately explain what makes the E1 interesting, though. The killer feature is its ability to build texture. Instead of simply putting a flat image onto an object, the E1 can repeatedly lay down white or transparent ink to create areas up to 5mm high. You can make lettering stand proud of a surface, reproduce the texture of brush strokes or give artwork an almost embossed appearance.
It feels somewhere between owning a normal printer and a 3D printer, and the results are very cool. Even non-tech people who see its results (the wife, for example) are shocked at how good it is.
EufyMake’s positioning system makes it considerably less intimidating than that sounds. You put your object onto the printing bed and a combination of lasers and an overhead snapshot camera measures its position and height. Your object then appears inside the software, allowing you to position your artwork over it before sending the job to the printer.
Once you get used to the workflow, it becomes remarkably easy. And that is where things start getting dangerously expensive.
Suddenly everything in the games room is printableI have a games room filled with old consoles, computers and other pieces of technology collected over decades, so I was probably the worst possible person to give one of these machines to.
I started looking around the room and seeing surfaces.
One of my favourite projects has been printing Buck Rogers artwork directly onto metal to create posters. There is something particularly satisfying about producing artwork on metal rather than printing something on paper and putting it in a frame. The colour is wonderfully vivid and the object itself feels substantial. It doesn’t look like something I have knocked up on an inkjet printer at home.
That is the thing about the E1. It makes home-made objects look surprisingly close to commercially manufactured ones. We have a lot of cool artwork around the house, printed on glass or metal, and the like, and most of it has cost what I would judge to be a fortune. I’d rather get another old console from eBay, but that’s never how it works in here. Now, I can print our own. I still can’t put it up like because I’m not allowed to hang the things I like, but it’s become a race to see who dies first, who gets to decorate the house in the style of their choosing. If it’s her, I will honour her with a massive glass print of Battlestar Galactica.
This style of printing also combines brilliantly with another hobby of mine: 3D printing. I have several projects around the house performing various jobs, and rather than leaving them in anonymous black boxes, I have been able to 3D-print cases and then use the E1 to finish them properly.
That combination is incredibly powerful. A 3D printer creates the object and the UV printer adds graphics, labels and colour. Suddenly you aren’t simply making a case; you can make something that looks like an actual product.
I have done the same kind of thing with retro computing projects. I recently built a MiSTer FPGA setup and printed directly onto the spacebar of its keyboard. Is having a custom-printed spacebar remotely necessary? Nope. Does it make the whole thing cooler? What do you think?
And that pretty much sums up my relationship with the E1.
Look, it’s a spacebar with the MiSTer FPGA logo printed on it – not a sticker This isn’t about mugsMost of EufyMake’s marketing understandably concentrates on things such as mugs, tumblers, signs, personalised gifts and products that somebody might reasonably sell. EufyMake even provides calculations illustrating the potential margin from selling UV-printed items. Its UK site currently gives an example of a textured ceramic fridge magnet costing £1.65 in material and ink against a proposed £11.30 selling price.
That is important because, as a commercial thingamabob, the E1 makes considerably more sense.
For me, though, its attraction is being able to create one-off objects that probably wouldn’t otherwise exist.
A custom faceplate for a retro machine. A metal poster from an obscure science-fiction show. Labels for a computer project. Artwork on a controller stand. A badge for a piece of homemade hardware. A coaster featuring something that only five people would recognise, or a completely printed mini-PC case highlighting what the box is for.
The more niche your interests become, the better the E1 gets.
My Geekom mini PC that houses my doomsday handbook Project NomadThere are companies that will manufacture almost anything these days, but normally you have to upload artwork, wait for somebody else to make it, pay postage and sometimes order several copies when you only want one.
With the E1 sitting there, the gap between having an idea and holding it in your hands can be minutes. That is addictive AF.
Print quality is superbFortunately, the results justify much of the excitement. The E1 can produce extremely sharp images and excellent colour. Fine text comes out beautifully, and artwork printed onto a good substrate can have that properly manufactured appearance I mentioned earlier.
Printing white underneath colour also means you aren’t restricted to pale surfaces. If you want an image on black plastic or brushed metal, the printer can lay down an opaque white foundation before adding the CMYK layer. Then you can add gloss. Or texture. Or both.
And this is approximately the moment when your ink cartridges begin screaming for your bank account details.
Raised printing looks fantastic, particularly on logos and artwork where you can selectively emphasise particular details, but the effect is created by repeatedly depositing layers. Those layers have to come from somewhere, and this magic is not free,
In practice, white ink is the one I watch most carefully.
This isn’t just something I have noticed. Other reviewers have found the same thing. WIRED measured a 2.48ml print on a tumbler where 2.22ml of the total was white ink, while Tom’s Hardware also noted that users can expect to burn through white considerably faster than the standard colours.
Once you start creating deep textures, gloss can disappear alarmingly quickly as well.
The E1 gives you the creative equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet and then sends you a bill every time you go back for another plate.
The ink problemThis is probably the biggest issue anybody considering the E1 as a hobby machine needs to understand, and the one that if you are just dragged in by the marketing without doing your research, you can come a cropper.
The E1 uses six proprietary 100ml cartridges: cyan, magenta, yellow, black, white and gloss. There is then a separate cleaning cartridge handling waste ink and fluids used by the maintenance system. EufyMake’s UK store currently lists individual ink and cleaning cartridges at £34.99 before promotional discounts.
You don’t just consume ink when creating things either, which seems crazy, but that’s the way of the technology.
UV printheads cannot simply be treated like the £50 inkjet printer sitting beside your PC. Ink needs to remain flowing and the printhead needs to be maintained. The E1 automates much of that process, which is good because I certainly don’t want to dismantle a UV printhead every few days.
The downside is that maintenance consumes ink.
WIRED found that after 12 hours without printing, the machine could use around 0.2ml of each ink cycling the system, while longer periods trigger additional maintenance. Bringing the printer back from its longer-term maintenance mode also consumes ink.
There is something psychologically painful about owning a printer capable of using expensive ink while you are specifically not using it.
Even all of this will not ultimately save the printhead, which, remarkably, is listed as a consumable, and a replacement will set you back an eye-watering £549. Cripes. Just cripes.
And then the printer simply stopsInk consumption, however, isn’t actually my biggest annoyance with the E1. That honour now belongs to the cleaning cartridge.
The E1’s JetClean system is designed to keep the printer operational without requiring you to become an expert in UV-printer maintenance. The cleaning cartridge collects waste ink and contains cleaning and moisturising fluid, and in principle the system works very well.
Until it is full.
I have had the printer working perfectly well one day, only to switch it on for another project and be told that the cleaning cartridge needs replacing. There was no warning. If you thought it was annoying, the software doesn’t tell exactly how much ink you have left, double that when that box of slop on the side suddenly decides it’s finished work.
More importantly, there isn’t an option to say, “Fine, but can I just finish this one print?”
The machine stops. I didn’t know it was about to stop until it stopped. And I was just about to print a gift for somebody.
In my case, I went to buy another cleaning cartridge and discovered EufyMake didn’t have them in stock unless I spent a hundred quid on one that came with a set of ink I didn’t need – I mean, I will need it, but I needed the £100 more. That left me trawling other retailers trying to find somebody who could supply one, of which I found one that arrived two days later.
During that period, my extremely expensive printer was useless, and I was fearful that the print head was drying out, whispering, “I’m consumable, you know”.
EufyMake’s UK store does list cleaning cartridges again at the time of writing, and a full ink and cleaning kit is also available, but my experience has taught me that if you own an E1, keeping a spare cleaning cartridge in the cupboard is probably essential rather than optional.
The same applies to white and gloss ink if you enjoy textured printing. When a required cartridge gets sufficiently low, creativity time is over until you buy another one. These all add up to the cost, and don’t get me started on the ink that has an expiry date after which you can’t print with it. A software tweak has softened that a little but you still can’t store it indefinitely.
It also stinksThere is no delicate way of putting this. The EufyMake E1 smells.
People will have different levels of sensitivity to this, and I appear to be towards the more sensitive end of the scale, but I cannot comfortably sit in the same room while mine is printing.
That considerably affects where you can put it. If you have a basement or a workshop, not a problem. I don’t.
My games room would seem like the obvious home for a printer I predominantly use to make things for my games room. In reality, I don’t particularly want to sit beside it while it is curing UV ink for a long print.
EufyMake has also now released dedicated ventilation hardware. Its Exhaust Fan Kit vents fumes outside through a hose, while the considerably more expensive Purifier P1 provides a standalone filtration option. At the time of writing, the UK prices are £149.99 and £589.99 respectively before current discounts.
I welcome the fact these now exist, but the purifier also illustrates the fundamental problem with the E1 as a hobby purchase. You buy an expensive printer, then expensive ink, then cleaning cartridges, and you may eventually find yourself considering another £500-plus piece of equipment because the first expensive piece of equipment makes your room smell.
That escalated quickly.
The hardware itself is excellentAll of this complaining shouldn’t obscure the fact that the actual machine is extremely impressive.
The E1 weighs around 20kg and measures 590 x 250 x 407mm before you start attaching larger printing beds and accessories. It feels reassuringly substantial rather than like a giant plastic domestic printer.
The modular nature of it is clever too. The standard flatbed handles most of what I want to do, but there is a rotary attachment for printing cylindrical objects, UV DTF equipment for transfers and stickers which is very, very cool, and a roll-to-film system capable of producing jobs up to 10 metres long.
For somebody building a business, that expandability matters enormously. For somebody like me, it mostly means there are several additional accessories I have to stop myself buying.
The software has improved as well, and the automatic positioning system removes one of the things that might otherwise make this kind of printing intimidating. Being able to photograph the bed, see the object and drag your design into position makes the E1 feel much closer to a consumer creative tool than industrial printing equipment.
There is still experimentation involved. Different materials behave differently, surfaces sometimes need preparing and you will inevitably waste ink and blanks learning what works.
But experimentation is also half of the fun.
The Etsy machineThis is where the E1 review splits into two completely different conclusions.
If you already run a craft business, sell personalised products or are seriously considering opening an Etsy store, I can absolutely understand buying one.
At the time of writing the basic E1 bundle sits around the £2,000 mark in the UK, so this isn’t an impulse purchase. But if you are selling personalised products at £10, £20 or £30 each, the economics begin looking much more reasonable.
I UV printed a Cyberpunk scene onto the cover of my notebook – you could obviously sell stuff like thisYou can take cheap blanks and add genuine value to them. You can offer small production runs without outsourcing anything. You can create personalised items on demand. And because UV printing works on such a broad selection of materials, you aren’t trapped making one type of product.
With enough orders, I can see the E1 paying for itself. You could probably make an extremely good little business around one of these.
The more interesting question for me is whether you should spend £2,000 on one simply because making things is fun. That is much harder.
An expensive luxury I don’t want to give upIf you are purely a hobbyist, the EufyMake E1 makes substantially less financial sense.
The printer itself is expensive. The consumables are expensive. Maintenance consumes ink. Textured printing consumes considerably more. Cleaning cartridges eventually need replacing. An empty cartridge can stop the machine altogether, and proper ventilation may require yet another purchase.
You could commission a lot of metal posters and personalised PC cases for the money I have spent on equipment and ink.
But that isn’t quite the point is it?
The thing I like most about owning the E1 is that it has removed a barrier between my imagination and making something real.
I can design something ridiculous in the morning and have it sitting in my games room that afternoon. I can make a tiny detail for a retro computer nobody sells. I can turn a plain 3D-printed box into something that looks like bespoke hardware. I can print Buck Rogers artwork onto metal simply because I think Buck Rogers artwork would look cool printed onto metal.
It encourages you to create and that is a delight. That is why, despite all my complaints, I still really like it.
The EufyMake E1 is absolutely not a cheap way to decorate a games room. In fact, viewed purely from that perspective, buying one is faintly ridiculous.
But if your games room is also your workshop, your hobby space and the place where stupid ideas periodically turn into projects, I can’t think of many machines that offer this much creative freedom.
VerdictThe EufyMake E1 is a brilliant creative tool trapped inside an expensive ecosystem. Its print quality is superb, its ability to print directly onto almost anything feels slightly magical, and combining UV printing with things such as 3D printing opens up an enormous range of possibilities for custom gaming and retro-computing projects.
For a small business, the E1 is much easier to justify because those running costs can be incorporated into products you sell. For a hobbyist, £2,000-plus for the machine followed by a steady procession of ink and maintenance costs makes it a serious luxury.
I wouldn’t recommend somebody casually interested in making a few personalised gaming bits rush out and buy one.
But would I want to give mine back? Not a chance.
Pros: Superb print quality; prints on a huge range of materials; textured printing can look spectacular; excellen