New electronics (AVR upgraded to STM32)

Lighter, stronger, faster extruder

Easier to swap/maintain hotend

Faster and more automated bed leveling

Better stepper motors

It’s the one FDM 3D printer worth buying that is being cloned and copied with so-so results by Chinese companies.

Unlike Ender etc., Prusa is the true “just works” FDM printer

I do recommend Prusa to new 3D printing hobbyists because there are a lot of quality of initial experience features on them.

That acknowledged, my (lightly modded) Ender3s, a Flashforge Creator clone, and an SKTank kit-built printer all also “just work” and can use the same machine settings in slicer thanks to Klipper macros (to the point that I’ll often start a print on them in the basement without ever going down there and checking that the first layer looks okay). I’d say I’m well above 97% for prints work without any fuss.

Its more just a brand thing, Prusa was one of the early big names in (hobbyist) 3d printing scene. I don't think this printer coming from any other brand would have reached the front page

This is the truth. Prusa used to be in front of the line a couple of years ago, but since then they've dropped the ball and other manufacturers have caught up. And with much better open-source alternatives like Voron printers, very few people are ready to shell out money for Prusa printers. Plus, there's a big fanboy community around this brand, a lot of which might just be genuine shills (maybe not here on HN, but they do exist on reddit).

Most of the listed features are incremental updates over the previous model; the MK3. However, as someone who's been using 3D printers for about 3 years, I'd say the biggest improvement here is the automatic first layer calibration.

Until recently (most notably until the Bamboo Labs Carbon X1) you had to spend time setting up your printer to get a good first layer. This would involve changing the distance between the nozzle that lays out the melted plastic and the bed on which the model is printed. Because this distance varies not just between different units of the same printer, but also has to change based on what material (PLA, PETG, etc) you're printing with, it needed some knowledge to set correctly.

While that process did get much simpler (with most of it being automated), it still involved some tweaking on the part of the user. That's a problem for people who are new 3D printing. It meant that you couldn't start printing immediately after unboxing your printer. It also meant that you had to spend considerable time (a few hours at least in my case) figuring out what a "good first layer" means, and then tweaking your printer to print the first layer well.

With this update, you can now start printing immediately after unboxing your printer (after some minor assembly), which is a huge thing for people who are new to 3D printing.

When I got my first printer a few years ago, I remember having to spend a couple of hours initially learning how to do this calibration, and I didn't get great results until a few more weeks of learning and tweaking.

Note that this is from the perspective of a hobbyist. People using 3D printers on a commercial scale might find the other improvements to be a big thing for their use case.

That's a great explanation. Thank you!