If 2025 made multicolor printing mainstream, 2026 is the year it got greedy. Anycubic's Kobra lineup now scales color further than almost anything at its price, topping out at 16 colors through stackable material units — a number that would have meant an industrial machine a few years ago.
The Kobra S1 ACE 2 Pro Combo
The centerpiece is the Kobra S1 ACE 2 Pro Combo, which launched with an early-bird price of $459 and two free spools of filament for the first 1,000 buyers. It ships with the ACE 2 Pro automatic color system and supports up to 16-color printing — the ACE units handle the filament swapping and, critically, integrated drying, addressing the moisture problems that plague multi-spool setups left exposed for long prints. Sixteen colors on a sub-$500 machine is a genuinely aggressive proposition, the kind of spec that used to be reserved for tool-changer rigs costing several times as much. It is Anycubic planting a flag squarely in the territory Bambu opened, and undercutting on color count.
Going big: the Kobra S1 Max
For makers who need size as well as color, the Kobra S1 Max Combo scales the concept up. It pairs a massive 350 × 350 × 350 mm build volume with support for up to 16 colors via four ACE 2 Pro units, a 350 °C high-temperature hotend, and a 65 °C actively heated chamber. That combination — large format, many colors, hot end and chamber built for engineering materials — is what makes it one of the most capable and best-value large-format machines of 2026. The heated chamber matters as much as the build volume: big parts in ABS, ASA, or carbon-fiber blends need that stable, warm environment to keep from warping, and bolting it onto a multicolor machine is the kind of feature stacking that defines this generation of printers.
And down: the $299 Kobra X
At the other end, the Kobra X brings the color story to the true budget tier. It packs higher print speeds, multicolor capability, and smart monitoring into a 260 × 260 × 260 mm build volume, printing four colors out of the box via an integrated ACE Gen 2 system, with additional ACE 2 Pro units expanding it to as many as 19 colors. At around $299, it puts genuine multicolor in reach of a first-time buyer — the exact spot where the most price-sensitive shoppers live, and where Chinese makers like Anycubic and Creality fight hardest. The takeaway across the whole line is that color count is no longer a premium feature you pay extra for; it is a spec to be maxed out and advertised, like megapixels once were on cameras.
The catch nobody advertises
Sixteen or nineteen colors sounds dazzling, but the practical reality deserves a footnote. Every color change on a single-nozzle system means a purge — flushing the old color out of the hot end — and the more colors a print uses, the more material and time go to waste rather than into the part. A wildly multicolor print can generate a startling pile of purged 'poop' and run far longer than a single-color version. The drying built into the ACE units helps reliability, and slicers keep getting smarter about minimizing swaps, but the headline color counts are a ceiling, not a typical use. For most makers, two to four colors covers the vast majority of real prints; the 16-color number is best understood as proof of how far the budget tier has come, not a daily workflow.
Anycubic's bet versus Bambu's
The Kobra line is best understood as Anycubic's answer to the machine that defined the category, Bambu's A1 and P1 series with the AMS. Both rely on the same fundamental approach — an external unit that stores spools and feeds them one at a time into a single nozzle, swapping and purging between colors — so the core experience is similar. Where Anycubic is making its play is on raw numbers and price: more colors per dollar, integrated drying in the ACE units, and a willingness to stack multiple units for counts Bambu does not chase. Bambu, in turn, tends to win on ecosystem polish, the MakerWorld model library, and a reputation for working flawlessly out of the box. The buyer's real choice is less about color count, which both do well, and more about which ecosystem and support experience they want to live in.
Choosing within the Kobra line itself comes down to honest needs. The Kobra X at around $299 is the right call for someone who wants a taste of multicolor without much outlay and prints mostly modest-sized objects. The S1 ACE 2 Pro Combo is the mainstream pick — serious color, sensible build volume, a fair price. The S1 Max only earns its keep for people who genuinely print large parts or demanding engineering materials and will use the heated chamber; for everyone else it is more machine, and more cost and footprint, than the work requires. As always, the smart move is to buy for the prints you actually make, not the spec sheet that looks most impressive.
However the brand battle shakes out, the maker is the winner. A few years ago, reliable multicolor meant a flagship machine and a premium price; now it is a checkbox on printers from $299 up, with integrated drying and large formats thrown in. The 16-color headline is mostly a flex, but the everyday reality underneath it — clean, dependable two-to-four-color printing on an affordable, well-equipped machine — is exactly the kind of capability that keeps pulling new people into the hobby. That is the real story of Anycubic's 2026 lineup, color count aside.
What It Means for Makers
- Multicolor is now a budget feature. Anycubic's line offers serious color counts from $299 to under $500 — no flagship required.
- Integrated drying is the quiet upgrade. The ACE units dry filament as they feed it, fixing a real reliability headache of multi-spool printing.
- The Max is a large-format sleeper. 350mm, heated chamber, and 350°C hot end make it a strong engineering-materials machine, color aside.
- Budget your purge. High color counts waste material and time at every swap — most real prints want two to four colors, not sixteen.
