Anker Quietly Killed Its 3D Printer Line Over a Year Ago

The Exit Nobody Noticed

Anker makes chargers, earbuds, cameras, robot vacuums. For a while it also made 3D printers, and they were actually decent. The AnkerMake M5 launched to solid reviews, built a loyal community, and then vanished. No press release. No farewell blog post. The official word came through a Discord message, and most owners found out from Reddit.

That was more than a year ago. Anker confirmed to The Verge at the time that sales of the M5 and its smaller sibling the M5C were paused indefinitely. Spokesperson Brett White could not say whether the company would ever resume production or release another printer. Nothing has changed since. The printers are gone from Anker's site, and the FAQ pages went with them.

Why Anker Walked Away

The stated reason is supply chain trouble. According to reporting from Tom's Hardware, Anker could not source critical components for its FDM machines. That sounds vague, but it fits a pattern. The desktop 3D printer market in 2025 and 2026 has been a knife fight on price, and Bambu Lab has squeezed everyone's margins. Components that were cheap and abundant when AnkerMake launched became hard to justify at the volumes Anker was moving.

There was also a brand problem. Anker tried to relaunch its printer ambitions under the eufyMake name, complete with a record-setting Kickstarter for the E1 UV printer. That machine, which prints on objects rather than building them layer by layer, still exists. But the FDM line did not survive the transition. Printer listings disappeared from the website entirely, which tells you the indefinite pause was never really a pause.

The Part That Should Worry M5 Owners

The hardware still works. The M5 was a well-built machine with a fast print speed for its era and a genuinely friendly setup process. The problem is everything around it. Owners on r/AnkerMake report that spare parts dried up within a month of the printers being pulled. Customer support initially promised continued parts availability. That promise did not hold.

Cloud features are the bigger long-term risk. Like most modern printers, the M5 leans on app connectivity and remote monitoring. If Anker switches those servers off, the machines lose functionality that owners paid for. Community firmware projects may fill some of the gap, but that is a lot to ask of casual users who bought the M5 precisely because it was beginner-friendly.

What to Buy Instead

If you were holding out for an AnkerMake comeback, stop waiting. The market has moved on, and honestly, it moved somewhere good. The Bambu Lab P1S at around $599 covers everything the M5 did and prints faster with better out-of-the-box calibration. The Bambu A1 at roughly $399 is the better pick for beginners. Creality's K series remains the budget workhorse if you like tinkering, and Prusa's machines are still there if open firmware matters to you.

Anker's exit is a reminder of a simple truth in this hobby: buy the company, not just the machine. A printer is a five-year relationship with parts, firmware, and servers. When the company behind it treats the product line as an experiment, the customers end up as the long-term cost.

The 3D printer market is better off without dozens of half-committed brands clogging up Amazon search results. But the M5 deserved a better ending than a Discord message.