Creality SPARKX i7 Review: Not just another color bedslinger

Surprise! Creality’s latest bedslinger isn’t an Ender 3. Technically, it’s not even a Creality, but a new SPARKX brand that is “powered by Creality.” The SPARKX i7 is a budget friendly 3D printer aimed firmly at people new to the hobby. It’s a printer that’s not just easy to use, but friendly to users.

Creality’s marketing team may have gone a bit overboard on the AI hype, especially the new “Cube Me” app, which turns selfies into printable, super cute, mini me models. This feature is available to anyone with a Creality account and access to Creality Cloud, and is not unique to SPARKX. At the time of review, I couldn’t connect the SPARKX to the mobile app, or even find the Cube Me feature on my phone. It may have a more obvious tie in once the printer starts shipping next month.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think the SPARKX i7 is a real gem of a 3D printer. It’s easy to set up and use, well-designed, and easy to maintain. The new CFS Lite is brilliant in its simplicity. It also benefits from a mobile app that lets you avoid the ever so nerdy task of learning a slicer, which isn’t my cup of tea, but if you’re 12 might come in handy.

But it’s also very much a Bambu Lab A1 clone decked out with RGB lights.

The SPARKX i7 has a 260 x 260 x 255m build volume, which is less on the Z axis than last year’s Creality Hi and just a smidgen more than Bambu A1’s 256mm³ volume. It comes as a four color combo or a single color model. A new “CFS mini” can hold two spools for continuous feeding, but not multicolor operation.

Retailing at $399 for the combo, and launching with an early bird price of $339, the Creality SPARKX i7 is an awesome printer to welcome beginners to the hobby and one of the best 3D printers to start the year.

Specifications: Creality SPARKX i7 Color Combo

Creality SPARKX i7 Color Combo: Included in the Box

The SPARKX i7 Color Combo is shipped in one box that’s surprisingly small and light. There are very few pieces to the printer and very few tools needed for setup. There are two hex wrenches, a metal scraper, a small white filament sample, power and signal cables PTFE tubes and a single spool holder. There’s a paper copy of the quick start guide, a card with QR codes to the unboxing and setup guide, Creality Cloud app, and Creality Print Slicer.

In addition, Creality sent black, red, white, and blue Hyper PLA filament to load up the CFS for the review.

Design of the Creality SPARKX i7

The first thing you’ll notice about the SPARKX i7 is that it doesn’t require a forklift to get it into the house. Compared to the last batch of Creality printers (like the previous bedslinger, the Creality Hi) the SPARKX i7 is very light at 20 pounds, with the CFS Lite adding another 7.5 pounds. Initially, I was a little concerned this meant it was cheaply built, but the i7 holds together quite well.

The SPARKX i7 looks way too much like a Bambu Lab A1 with the X axis mirror imaged. Its quick release hotend is very similar to a Bambu A1 hotend, though it has an easier to use clasp mounted on the side.

The base is lightweight plastic, with a brushed aluminum gantry and dual lead screws encased inside it. There are linear rods for the bed and a linear rail for the X axis. The direct drive extruder works well, even printing softer 85A TPU with no trouble. I didn’t have any issues with filament jamming, but if you need to dig anything out, the extruder has a release which swings the tension wheel out, exploding the entire filament path. This design should make it simple to clear if there is an issue.

The overall feel of the machine’s hardware is solid. Running in standard mode, this printer very quiet, with the parts cooling fan and the low-pitched rumble of the CFS Lite feeding being the only things you’ll hear.

The SPARKX i7 has a good 720p camera for print monitoring from the device tab of the slicer or from the Creality Cloud app, as well as for AI spaghetti monitoring and build plate detection.

There is led lighting for the camera with a little privacy shield you can swing closed. An RGB LED strip on the front of the machine acts as a status indicator and is programmable to suit your mood.

The CFS Lite looks and feels like a toy, specifically an Easy Bake Oven from my childhood. First impressions were not good, especially when loading filament and noticing that the spools just free-wheel inside the CFS Lite. The lack of retraction of the spools does make a bit of a mess, although surprisingly, nothing ever tangled. The buttons along the top release the extruders for unloading.

The surprising benefit of this system is that cardboard spools, slightly oversized spools, and basically anything I have in the house, even small sample spools, will fit into the CFS Lite. A 2kg spool will fit fine, although it will take up the two center slots. There are four feeders, with built-in buffers, at the top of the device that push filament into a four port hub on the tool head. The CFS Lite does have an RFID reader to automatically load settings when using Creality branded filament. Despite the first impressions, this is a really innovative and inexpensive design that worked flawlessly.

Assembling the Creality SPARKX i7

This might be the easiest to assemble printer I’ve reviewed, and Creality did a great job making it so. The packaging around the tool head is cardboard and removes easily, as does the foam under the bed. Not reading the unboxing guide, I missed the fact that there are two brackets screwed into the gantry, holding the Z axis in place. No matter, the initial setup guide on the printer reminded me.

The touch screen is pre-attached and swivels into position. The single spool holder is easily removable and snaps into position without tools. There is one signal cable to the CFS Lite and best of all, the Bowden tubes from the tool head to the CFS Lite have all the cable organizers preinstalled and just pop into their collets. They also easily pop out of the collets, when moving to the single spool holder when needed. Plug it in and you’re done!

Leveling the Creality SPARKX i7

The Creality SPARKX i7 sets the bed level and Z offset with its initial calibration and automatically at the start of each print. The bed leveling routine is quick enough that I just let it go while printing, and it has worked flawlessly.

Loading Filament on the Creality SPARKX i7

The CFS Lite is easy to load and unload. Once you put in a spool, there is a port on the roof of the box to insert the filament. Filament is pulled in automatically and you are done. The RFID reader in the box will transmit filament data to the printer if you are using Creality filament. If you use a 3rd party filament, you will need to select the type and color of the filament at the printer screen. Unloading is easy as there is a button over each spool that can be pressed to release the feeder and withdraw the filament.

Preparing Files / Software for SPARKX i7

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The Creality SPARKX i7 comes with download instructions for Creality Print, which is based on Orca Slicer and Cura engine from Ultimaker. Of course, Orca Slicer is a fork of Bambu Studio, which is based on PrusaSlicer.

Creality Print is where models are set up, colored, and sliced into gcode. You can also access Creality Cloud from the home page to access online resources for printer help and find online models. It does an excellent job integrating the printer into the Creality ecosystem.

You can run the printer completely offline, using a USB stick to load your models for printing or setting up in LAN mode. You can access the printer’s Fluidd interface directly by entering the printer’s IP address followed by :4408. However, getting the camera to work directly from Fluidd is challenging.

At the time of the review, I could not access the printer via the Creality Cloud App, but it will be possible to run your printer directly from your mobile device. The app now offers presliced versions of models as well as a lite mobile slicer to handle it yourself.

Printing on the Creality SPARKX i7

The Creality SPARKX i7 printed flawlessly right out of the box with no issues using the Creality Hyper PLA they supplied for the review. You’ll definitely want to check out our list of the best filaments for 3D printing to load it up the CFS Lite.

The first print I ran the pre-sliced 3D Benchy stored in the machine’s memory using red Creality Hyper PLA. The boat printed in 21 minutes and looks great, with the only defect being a layer line from the deck showing through the length of the hull.

The SPARKX i7 is more than a bit wasteful when it comes to multicolor prints, but this is an issue with most multicolor printers that send all its colors through one nozzle. The problem is that once filament is melted in the hotend it can only be pushed out, resulting in printer “poop”. Creality Printer does a decent job of letting you tune the filament waste, but the default setting error on the wasteful side. You’ll need to take time to tune your print settings if you don’t want to waste more filament that you put into the model.

On this four color calibration castle, the print looks spectacular and only needs 31.59 grams of filament. However, with default settings it put 49.38 grams into the purge tower and spewed out 488.85 grams of poop. That’s over a half a spool worth of material to make one small model.

I ran a lot of models to test the color capabilities of the CFS Lite and to check for potential tangles. The results were really good overall, with only one failure due to bed plate adhesion

This Dragonfly from Cinderwing with two fidget spinners of my own design as purge objects. With a .2mm layer height and an average print speed of 180 mm/s, the print completed in 10 hours and 20 minutes and looked terrific with just a few wisps of string. The purge objects soaked up a ton of waste.

To test out both the color capabilities of the CFS Lite and its ability to print with non-standard spool types, I used a beautiful but challenging, gnarly old cardboard spool of recycled PETG from Printerior. I also used a really old spool of Jessie PETG, which has been too big to fit on anything fit on anything with an AMS style box. The CFS Lite had no problems, and both of these spools fit and ran great. The resulting Cinderwing3D Gemstone Dragon is excellent, taking 8 hours 28 minutes to print with a .2mm layer height and ran at an average speed of 120mm/s.

It's been a struggle to get Creality machines to print TPU on the last several reviews, but the extruder for the SPARKX i7 had no problem. First I ran a bumper of my own design for an RC project I am working on using a 95A TPU from Inland. The four parts took 2 hours 3 minutes to print, using a .2mm layer height and an average print speed of 50mm/s. I was extremely happy to see no under extrusion or quality issues at all.

For a slightly harder test, I ran another RC part of my own design using a softer 85A TPU from Siraya Tech. Using a .2mm layer height, and running at an average of 50 mm/s, this tire took 7 hours and 40 minutes to print. FYI, adding a little fuzzy skin to the tread surface is my track secret, and these tires printed great.

Bottom Line

Creality’s SPARKX i7 is a well-designed, simple to build, easy to use, entry level machine. Do not fall into the “it’s just another bed slinger” trap. The new extruder design for the SPARKX i7 is easy to maintain and can push soft TPU like a champ. The quick release nozzle has an easy to see and operate built in latch. The CFS Lite can run nearly any spool type and, while messy, did not have a single issue. This is a next level bedslinger, not your dad’s Ender 3 Pro.

By launching the i7 under the new SPARKX brand, Creality appears to be drawing a clear line between its legacy Ender 3 machines, all the accompanying baggage, and a new generation of beginner-friendly printers. Whether that strategy sticks remains to be seen, but the hardware makes a strong case on its own. The SPARKX i7 isn’t trying to reinvent 3D printing—it’s trying to make it less frustrating, more fun, and easier to start. And on that front, it delivers.

If you’re looking for the OG color combo bed slinger, then check out the Bambu Lab A1 Combo on sale for $399. If you need a printer that can handle high temperature filament like ASA and nylon, then the Anycubic Kobra S1 Combo (with it’s improved slicer) is a bargain at $459. And if you want a color bedslinger with a massive print bed, the Anycubic Kobra 3 Max Combo for $599 is a steal.