Halot One Plus review — a beautifully simple resin 3D printer


An image of a Creality Halot One Plus review alongside figurines of Red vs Blue Spartans

3D printer manufacturer Creality is one of the most renowned companies for FDM filament-based machines, but the Chinese company has rarely been associated with resin printers. With the Halot One series, Creality is taking another stab at the resin market, and the Halot One Plus is a fantastic example of Creality at its best.

Competing against the likes of Elegoo and Anycubic, Creality’s Halot One Plus is a high-quality resin-based 3D printer. Unlike FDM printers, which feed plastic filament into a hot nozzle, this device cures toxic liquid resin layer-by-layer with a bright 7.9inch LCD display.

Setting up the Halot One Plus is a breeze and is very similar to other resin printers. For the most part, the machine is pre-assembled with only the build plate needing to be attached with the included screws and alan keys. After a quick levelling process, you’re ready to print.

Boasting a build volume of 172mm x 102mm x 160mm, this is the largest printer in the current Halot like, even besting the Pro. However, it’s far from the biggest 3D printer on the market. Despite this, the machine still has a lot of heft to it with a remarkably heavy base for its rather compact profile.

An image of the Creality Halot One Plus resin vat.
click to enlarge
+ 3
The Halot One Plus can hold around 650ml of resin without issue.

Creality’s device has been pushed in numerous adverts as a living-room friendly machine. While not stated as such in official store listings, numerous adverts have shown the device sitting in a living room, boasting its integrated carbon filter fan system. While we would love a printer that can be used safely in the living room, that’s simply not the case.

Through our testing, the Halot One Plus still gives off a rather oppressive odour from printing resin that can be off-putting and even hard to breathe. While the filtration system does a great job at limiting the smell of liquid resin, it’s still not really living-room compatible. Instead, it should be kept out of living areas such as a living room or bedroom without proper ventilation.

undefined

Nevertheless, printing with the machine is fantastic. With its 4K LCD, the Halot One Plus offers fantastic quality on printed models. After days of solid printing, the Creality machine handed in great quality prints one after another. Details were sharp and layer lines were barely noticeable across a number of prints.

With internet connectivity, the Halot line of printers even allow you to slice models to print from your phone. On a number of occasions, we browsed the Creality Cloud app, selected a model and printed overnight without even touching the machine itself. As expected, the model finished with flawless quality.

If you want to, you can even select a number of models to print from the machine itself. Using the printer’s small colour touchscreen, you can browse a selection of Creality Cloud models and print straight away. Once again, it’s as easy as it could possibly be.

An image of Mipha printed on the Creality Halot One Plus resin printer.
click to enlarge
+ 3
This model was printed straight from the printer’s interface without changing any settings.

The only true downside of the Halot line is its computer software. While not proprietary, you can always use ChiTuBox or Lychee, the Halot Box software is unbelievably slow. While fine upon launch, adding two models to the build plate causes performance to plummet, even on a machine with an i7 CPU and an RTX 3070. Even after numerous updates, the software still runs like molasses compared to popular alternatives.

Another downside to the device is print post-processing, an unavoidable reality of every single resin printer. After printing, resin prints need to be washed — typically with isopropyl alcohol — and cured. Afterwards, waste material such as the cleaning solution need to be properly disposed of. This isn’t a negative against the printer, it’s the trade-off for fantastic quality, but it’s worth noting.

As it stands, the Creality Halot One Plus resin printer is a fantastic device for anyone interested in SLA printing. Furthermore, it’s one of the most beginner friendly machines available in the market that is literally plug in and print thanks to its Creality Cloud functionality.

The details available on the Halot One Plus are amazing… my painting skills not so much.
click to enlarge
+ 3
The details available on the Halot One Plus are amazing… my painting skills not so much.

For $399, the Halot One Plus is one of the best 3D printers for miniatures, brilliant for figurines and an all-around great device. It’s finally time to admit: Creality is coming for the resin crown.

Creality Halot One Plus
Let down only by its optional slicer software, Creality’s Halot One Plus is a strong resin machine from the Kings of 3D printing.
3D Printer
Resin Printer
9 out of 10

For more articles like this, take a look at our Reviews and Hardware page.