ELEGOO Jumps Into Mobile Printing With Nexprint

Not long ago, getting a part off your printer meant a whole ritual. Download an STL, open your slicer, tweak the settings, export the G-code, then figure out how to get that file onto your machine. That routine is slowly disappearing.

ELEGOO’s latest Matrix app update is the newest example. You can now browse models from Nexprint and start a print straight from your phone, as long as you’re running a Centauri Carbon 2 or Centauri Carbon 2 Combo on the latest firmware. On its own it sounds like a minor convenience feature. Zoom out though, and it fits a much bigger pattern that’s been building across consumer 3D printing for years.

The competition stopped being only about who has the fastest printer or the cleanest print quality. These days brands are racing to build the smoothest experience from end to end, from finding a model to pulling a finished part off the plate.

This didn’t start with Bambu Lab

A lot of people trace this whole “print from your phone” idea back to Bambu Lab. It actually showed up earlier.

Creality launched Creality Cloud back in 2020, letting people browse models, slice in the cloud, and send prints to compatible machines remotely. It was ambitious for the time, even if the experience leaned on extra hardware like a Wi-Fi box and felt rough next to what we have now. Still, Creality was one of the first big consumer brands to seriously push in this direction, and that deserves credit.

Bambu Lab made it feel effortless

When Bambu Lab arrived with the X1 series in 2022, it didn’t invent mobile printing. What it did was make it feel effortless.

The X1 shipped with Bambu Handy, so you could monitor prints, get notifications, and control the machine from your phone. Useful, but not revolutionary on its own.

The bigger shift came a bit later with MakerWorld. Instead of grabbing a bare STL and figuring out the settings yourself, you could pick a model that already had a print profile baked in by the designer. A few taps and the printer already knew the supports, the filament, the whole setup. For beginners especially, that quietly removed one of the biggest reasons prints failed. It went from “remote printing” to find a model, tap print, walk away.

Everyone else followed

Once that approach caught on, the rest of the industry leaned in.

Prusa rolled out EasyPrint, a browser-based cloud slicer that lets you prep a model on your phone, tablet, or laptop and send it to your machine through Prusa Connect. Creality kept building out Creality Cloud, adding more printers and tightening the integration across its lineup.

The direction everyone was heading became pretty obvious.

Now it’s ELEGOO’s turn

ELEGOO started Matrix as a monitoring app. Check your printer status, watch progress, manage jobs from your phone. Handy, but nothing you couldn’t already get elsewhere.

Nexprint integration is the more interesting step. Now you can browse models inside the app and send them straight to a Centauri Carbon 2 or Carbon 2 Combo without opening a desktop slicer first. It’s still early and tied to those specific machines, but the signal is clear. ELEGOO isn’t thinking about hardware alone anymore. The software around the printer matters to them now too.

For existing ELEGOO owners, this is genuinely good news. ELEGOO has built a solid track record with budget-friendly CoreXY machines that punch well above their price. The one weak spot was always the experience around the printer. Next to Bambu Lab or Creality, there was noticeable friction in the day to day workflow. This update takes a big chunk of that friction away. And if you’ve been eyeing an ELEGOO printer but held back because the software felt a step behind, this might be the thing that tips the decision.

The real race is the ecosystem

Step back and the trend is hard to miss. Printer makers aren’t just competing on speed or acceleration numbers. They’re stitching together everything around the machine:

• The printer
• The slicer
• The phone app
• Cloud services
• An online model library
• Community-made print profiles

The shorter the trip from “I found this model” to “here’s the finished part in my hand,” the more likely you are to stick with that brand’s tools. That’s the whole reason companies are pouring money into mobile apps. It isn’t a gimmick. Convenience has quietly become one of the strongest selling points in consumer 3D printing.

ELEGOO’s Matrix update is one more sign this race is just warming up. For the rest of us, that’s not a bad thing.

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