Elegoo Emoji Centauri Carbon 2 Combo Review: Great Printer, Flawed Software

ELEGOO's Centauri Carbon 2 is already a capable multicolor CoreXY printer. Now the company has released a special EMOJI-branded edition in collaboration with the streetwear label of the same name. The Centauri Carbon 2 Combo costs $489.99 and adds a themed build plate, custom emoji UI skin, and a branded case to the standard Carbon 2 feature set. CGMagazine reviewed it and gave it a 7 out of 10. The hardware earns that score on its own. The software drags it down.

Build Quality and Design

The Combo ships with about 25 to 35 minutes of assembly out of the box. That is not a quick unbox-and-print experience, but the parts slot together cleanly and feel solid. The frame does not flex, and nothing feels like it was cut to the wrong tolerance.

The build volume measures 256 by 256 by 256 mm. That is a useful size for helmets, statues, and larger multicolor projects. The enclosed chamber is a genuine improvement over the open-bed design of ELEGOO's cheaper Neptune models. It keeps temperature stable and dramatically reduces the amount of plastic debris scattered around the printer after a long print.

The EMOJI edition ships with a dual-sided build plate. One side has the standard textured surface. The other has an embossed emoji pattern that transfers to the bottom of your prints. It is purely cosmetic, but it is well executed. If you want your benchy to have a smiley face on the bottom, this is your printer.

Multicolor and Hardware Features

The multicolor module sits on the right side of the frame and feeds up to four filaments into the hot end. RFID spool detection means the printer knows which material is loaded without you entering it manually. The filament hub has four mounting posts underneath so you can keep unused spools stored on the printer itself.

A five-inch capacitive touchscreen handles setup and monitoring. The custom EMOJI UI skin is a novelty, but the underlying interface is clear and functional. A real-time camera replaces the time-lapse system from the first-generation Carbon and gives reasonable quality for remote monitoring.

The nozzle now reaches 350C, up from 320C on the original Carbon. That higher temperature improves layer adhesion and lets you run engineering materials that need more heat. The trade-off is some stringing during retraction tests, which is manageable but not gone entirely.

Automatic bed leveling runs a 121-point scan before each print. It takes a couple of minutes and removes one of the more tedious steps from the pre-print routine. A clog detection sensor stops the print if the nozzle blocks, which is especially valuable on a multicolor machine where a single jam ruins hours of layered work.

Where It Falls Short

The ELEGOO Slicer is the main problem. It borrows some visual ideas from other slicers but buries important settings in menus that take too many clicks to find. Basic adjustments feel slower than they should.

More seriously, file transfers to the printer fail often enough to be a real annoyance. The camera sometimes does not activate until you restart the whole machine. Remote monitoring works only when the software decides it wants to cooperate.

The network connection is the biggest frustration. If the printer sits idle for a few days, it drops off the network entirely. Restoring it requires walking to the machine and reconnecting manually through the touchscreen. This issue existed on the first Centauri Carbon and has not been fixed. For users who want to start prints from their phone or check progress from work, this is a deal-breaker.

In its faster print modes, the printer vibrates noticeably and surface finish degrades. Balanced mode, the default, produces clean results at reasonable speeds. Ludicrous mode, named as a Spaceballs reference, gets the job done but is not meant for quality-critical parts.

Should You Buy It

The Centauri Carbon 2 Combo produces good prints. The multicolor module works smoothly when the rest of the system cooperates. The enclosed chamber and 350C nozzle make it genuinely versatile. If you are comfortable diagnosing slicer bugs and reconnecting a dropped Wi-Fi network, you will probably like this printer.

For first-time buyers or anyone who expects a modern printer to just work, the software problems are hard to ignore. There are other multicolor printers in this price range that do not require weekly network troubleshooting. The ELEGOO x EMOJI Centauri Carbon 2 Combo is a good printer held back by software that was not ready to ship with it.