Creality Halot-One Resin 3D Printer Review

The Halot One is another excellent budget resin printer for the hobbyist and enthusiast market, packed with features that make it both convenient and competitive, Creality has created a real competitor for this already dense market. The question is, does it have what it takes to be worth your money? Find out in our hands-on review of Creality’s mid-tier offering in their Halot series.

Creality Halot-One Resin 3D Printer Verdict

The Halot series of printers is relatively new to the scene and has kicked off with a standard model, the Halot-One, a lite and max version which are similar with different sizes, and a self-described “flagship” resin printer with the Halot-Sky. As a standard model for this series, the Halot-One sets a benchmark so that you can determine for yourself whether you’re looking for something more high-end or even more budget than this model; and what a good job it does of setting that standard.

With a 2k screen and an admirable printing size, as well as a variety of features that aid its print quality and ease of use, the Halot one is a surprisingly competent machine for its price. As with most of the Creality machines.

Perhaps the most noticeable mark of quality on the machine is its touchscreen, while many hobbyist level printers will choose cheap touch-screens or simple input systems, Creality has given the Halot-One a responsive and high-resolution touchscreen and an intuitive operating system, which is enough to make the machine feel like a quality product. In fact, the only downside with the input methods is the sliding bars, which are quite fiddly and difficult to set values precisely with. 

Another huge selling point for the printer is just how quiet it is. Quite often, the volume of the printer won’t matter, especially when the machine is kept in a low-use space to avoid resin smell and fumes, but for those that do work around their printers a lot, the volume of the Halot-One will not be a problem.

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Pros

• Decent 2k print quality
• Almost silent operating volume
• High quality touchscreen

Cons

• Small build area
• Prints fail occasionally

Creality Halot-One Resin Assembly and Setup

As with most resin printers, the setup required before starting a print is so minimal that you’re almost printing out of the box. Simply attaching the build plate, leveling it through the system’s automatic homing function, and installing the resin vat is all you need to do before starting to print with the machine.

Unfortunately, chitubox isn’t able to be used for the Halot one, instead, you have to either use their own Halot Box slicer or the third-party lychee slicer. Luckily Halot Box is quite familiar and easy to use, and doesn’t require too much setup.

Creality Halot-One Features

Creality has given the Halot-One a handful of unique and very interesting features, which make using the machine an absolute breeze, and the quality of the prints really shines thanks to them.

Remote Monitoring and Adjusting

Thanks to the Creality Cloud app, checking in on print progress and making on the fly adjustments to print settings is so simple you don’t even have to be near your printer. This is a game-changer for running prints from another location and checking in on prints without having to go to wherever your printer is, especially if it’s out in a garage or requires travel time.

Simple FEP Replacement

Replacing the FEP sheet on the resin vat is an easy process, and the machine actually comes with spare FEP sheets in case you damage your original.

Top Cover Detection

Thanks to a sensor on the back, the machine can detect when the cover is removed and automatically pause the printing. While I can’t think of any practical uses for this, it’s a useful safety measure as it means that you won’t be able to start the print leaving the lid off, and if you desperately need to access the inside mid-way through then you simply need to take off the cover.

Integral Light Source

Thanks to 6 lamps consisting of 4 light-emitting chips, creality claims that the Halot-One can reach more than 80% uniformity, which is around 20% more than a matrix light source.

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Test Prints

Below is a rundown of a selection of test models printed with the HALOT-ONE. Each of the models was post-processed first with a small pickling jar of 99.9% IPA to rinse off the majority of the excess resin, and then using a third party wash and cure machine on clean mode with more IPA before curing the models on the machine’s cure mode.

Armored Crusader Miniature

Quite large for a miniature, this model highlights the ability to print models of a reasonable size and still capture details and contours without showing obvious layer lines. Even the small details and parts that would appear to be flimsy are surprisingly strong, the sword for example is a thin piece of resin but holds particularly well without being too brittle.

D&D Miniatures

A selection of smaller miniatures with more precise details show the capability of the printer to the extent that it does reveal its limitations. While these figures have easily recognizable traits, features, and details, some of the joins and textures are lost to the resolution limits of the screen. That said, these are exemplary models still, and are understandably impressive for a printer of this caliber.

Warhammer Models

Smaller models are the most sensible things for this printer to handle, and even when not at miniature scale the models it’s capable of are very much impressive at a medium size. The details are quite well defined, and support structures are easy to work with. While the miniature scale models were a bit of a stretch for the printer, if you plan to print some slightly bigger models the loss in detail is so much less noticeable.

Chicken Foot

As an attempt at a larger model, making the most of the print size, this chicken foot intended to be part of a baba yaga hut shows the printers capability to deal with heavier and more substantial models. The size of the resin vat is plenty for keeping the print running. There’s some heft to the finished model, and again there are some powdery imperfections on the model but these don’t tend to matter once the model is prepped and painted.

Halot One Technical Specifications

The specs on the Halot-One are more than reasonable, being very competitive against the other printers on the market.

• Manufacturer: Creality
• Screen Type: LCD
• Assembly: Fully Assembled
• Build Volume: 127 x 80 x 160 mm
• Layer Height: 10 microns
• XY Resolution: 50 microns ( 2560 x 1620 pixels)
• Z-axis Positioning Accuracy: 0.01 mm
• Curing Wavelength: 405nm
• Curing Speed: 1-10S/layer
• Printing Speed: 60mm/h
• Display: 5-inch color touchscreen
• Materials: 405 nm UV resin
• Power Supply: 100W
• Input Voltage: 100-240V
• Motor Volume: <60dB
• Touchscreen: 5-inch capacitive screen
• File types: STL

Final Thoughts

Should You Buy the Creality Halot-One?

The Halot-One is one example of a wider range of resin printers from Creality, and I would expect that all the machines in the range will be of similar quality at different specifications. That said, Creality has put its best foot forward with the Halot-One, and it’s a competent mid-low range printer in its own right. If you’re liking what you’ve seen from this model, but are more budget-conscious or looking for something more premium, the Halot-One seems to suggest that the rest of the series will have just the same quality and attention to detail. Whether it compares to other manufactures printers is difficult to tell, while most printers of this range are incredibly similar, the Halot-One seems to put that extra effort into quality and ease of use with its surprisingly intuitive and high-quality touchscreen, and extra useful companion app for remote control, so maybe that does put it over its competitors.

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Your turn: Have you purchased the Creality Halot-One? Was your experience similar to mine? Share your thoughts below!