I agree with this. Unless you love tinkering and modding, and don't mind spending more in the long run, a Prusa is pretty much the gold standard for reliability/consistency. I bought cheap, with the understanding that I'd be spending the money over time and maybe have a better machine in the end, but it hasn't really worked out that way. The cheap printers get costly pretty quickly. I've learned a lot, but it's all been by necessity while troubleshooting various issues that I wouldn't have had with a better printer. If you want to print, get a good printer. If you want to tinker with stepper motors firmware, extruders, hot ends, bed leveling sensors, etc, then something cheap might be a better intro. Going cheap got me started, but it was a much steeper learning curve, included a lot of frustration along the way, and was ultimately more costly.