Four toolheads need four spools fed at once, and the Snapmaker U1 leaves its owners to work out where those spools live and how to keep them dry. BIQU's answer is the PopStation Mini, a sealed sheet-metal cabinet built to sit under the printer. A hands-on review published by VoxelMatters on November 13 concludes that it does the job well, with one caveat that matters: it is far from plug-and-play, and it is aimed at users who know what they are doing.
The review covers the cabinet together with BIQU's Panda Breath heater, which dries filament during printing. If you own a U1 or plan to buy one, you need to know what the cabinet does, what assembly involves and what it actually costs.
What the PopStation Mini Is
The PopStation Mini has a sheet-metal base with a welded frame and two drawers that open independently. Each drawer holds two standard 1 kg spools, which gives the U1's four toolheads one spool each. A heat-resistant transparent polycarbonate window shows how much filament is left. BIQU's official product page describes it the same way, as a compact sealed dual-drawer cabinet for four standard spools.
The filament paths are pre-routed, so the U1 keeps its auto-loading behavior. Filament runs from the drawers up to the printer. That matters more than it sounds. Much of the U1's appeal is its multi-toolhead workflow, and a storage add-on that broke automatic loading would undercut it.
The cabinet ships with fixed feet. Lockable casters are a separate option. The cabinet also has expandable RGB lighting that ties into BIQU's Panda RGB controller line.
Drying While You Print
The cabinet alone is a sealed box. The cabinet is built to work with the Panda Breath, BIQU's heater accessory, for drying filament during printing. VoxelMatters reviewed the two as a set and found the Panda Breath solid, useful hardware at a competitive price, but its setup was rough. The box included no instructions and the reviewer could not find a manual online. The device was developed for Bambu Lab printers and its software only includes Bambu Lab presets, which made it harder to configure with the Snapmaker's Klipper firmware. The reviewer never got it talking to the printer, so they switch it on manually, which works fine. BIQU says a more versatile control app is coming soon.
Readers should note what the sources leave out. BIQU's product page, as fetched, gives no dimensions and no drying specifications such as target temperature or humidity figures. We can't report performance numbers the sources don't contain. If you need specific drying temperatures for nylon or other demanding materials, confirm them with BIQU before you buy.
The same store sells the BIQU PopCap for the Snapmaker U1, a polycarbonate enclosure rated to 120 C with a noise-reducing top cover, aimed at ABS, nylon and PC. The PopCap was part of the reviewer's setup.
Assembly: Bring Your Own Brackets
This is where the review's "willing to work for it" framing comes from. Several components needed for assembly are not in the box. Buyers have to 3D print them from models BIQU supplies via MakerWorld. The reviewer reports that PLA should do fine, and that the parts printed quickly and without trouble, but you have to print them before the system is complete.
For most U1 owners that is a small hurdle, since they already own a capable printer. Still, there are practical consequences. You can't finish setup the day the box arrives without some print time first, so check the MakerWorld models before you order.
The second problem is hardware. VoxelMatters called the screw issue one BIQU could have avoided easily. The screw holes in the cabinet turned out to be too small: the included M3 screws would not go in cleanly and began to strip, and some of the original screws could not be removed at all, so the team had to cut them out. A workaround with M2.5 screws proved too loose. Some holes accepted M3 and some did not, so the finished spool holders wobble slightly. That does not stop the system working, but it turns routine assembly into a repair job. If you build one, start each screw by hand and stop at the first sign of binding rather than forcing it with a driver.
Two further hurdles came from the reviewer's rack layout, which put the cabinet below the printer rather than in direct contact with it. The supplied PTFE tubes were too short, so the team sourced extra tubing and some couplers. With the spools farther from the toolheads, the U1's firmware also needed a longer maximum filament feed length. That meant opening a terminal, getting root access to the printer and editing a configuration value. VoxelMatters says BIQU's instructions read like a translation from Chinese and leave out steps, and the printer seemed to ignore the change until a full restart that the documentation never mentions. Once that was done, the system ran without problems, though the first few loads needed some coaxing.
The Price Question
Pricing is the murkiest part of this story, and it is worth slowing down on. VoxelMatters cites a European store price of 289.99 euro and says US resellers list it at about 279 USD. The kit BIQU sent the reviewer came to roughly 600 euro in total: about 140 euro for the PopCap, about 300 euro for the PopStation Mini, about 45 euro for the casters and about 115 euro for the Panda Breath.
When we checked BIQU's own US store page, it listed the PopStation Mini at $65.99. The page notes that the version with wheels ships as two separate packages, the station and the wheels, from China, and a Black Friday sale banner was active on the site. The gap between roughly $279 and $65.99 is too large for a routine discount. The listing may reflect a time-limited sale, a different variant or a component listing, or an error. We could not tell which from the page itself, so we are not quoting either figure as the price. Check the exact variant, whether casters are included, and the final checkout total before you assume either number applies to you. The PopCap was listed on the same store from $139.99, close to the reviewer's euro figure.
Bottom Line for Makers
The PopStation Mini addresses a real gap. A four-toolhead printer needs four spools fed reliably, and a sealed, organized home for the spools that keeps auto-loading intact is a sensible answer. The two-drawer layout, the window, pre-routed paths and the option to add heat with the Panda Breath make a coherent system, and the reviewer reports it worked perfectly once it was built, calling the price very reasonable for a welded metal cabinet with sealed drawers.
It asks more of the buyer than the marketing implies. You will print some of your own mounting parts, you may fight the supplied hardware and the firmware instructions, and with every accessory added the full stack reached roughly 600 euro in the reviewer's case. If you are comfortable printing parts, editing printer configuration files and checking listings carefully, it is a tidy upgrade for a U1. If you want something that bolts on out of the box, the review suggests this isn't that product.
