When it comes to my decision making for what printer to get, while the price does matter, what is more important to me is being able to maintain the printer for a long period of time.
And I am not talking about right here, and now. There are a lot of parts for the Bambu A1 mini on the market today. I am talking years from now when the printer is considered old and obsolete, but still does the Job.
Prusa has a proven track record of not just providing parts themselves for their older printers. Going so far as to even offer upgrade kits for previous printers. But also using off the shelf components, making matienence a non-issue for me, even if Prusa was to get wiped off the face of the earth.
Meanwhile Bambu doesn't have that track record. And being, yet another Chinese Company, making an injection moulded machines using closed source firmware, and non-standard parts and tools to cut the costs down to be competitive. They've yet to prove to me that they will support their printer beyond when they are selling it.
Take for instance the most use and replaced part on a printer, the Nozzle. The Prusa Mini's nozzle is just a standard E3D V6 nozzle with hundreds upon thousands of spares of various quality available online. While the Bambu Labs A1 mini is a proprietary affair that includes the heat sink, that's only available from Bambu today.
Will someone make a clone? Who knows, but Bambu certainly hasn't built the trust yet to make me confident that they will. Or will open up the designs when they inevitably chase the next shiny, and drop the A1 mini for... let say the A2 mini, which might have an entirely new hotend assembly.
I wasted my Money years ago on a Flash Forge Adventure 3, a printer which killed itself by breaking it's X-Axis motor wire. I was out of warranty, there was no replacements on their website, and to even access the motherboard, I had to completely disassemble the printer. For $25 dollars more I can get a guarantee that not only my printer will work, but is repairable and will continue to work for years to come. I think I will pay the extra $25. Honestly I spent an extra $300 CAD to get a MK4 over the P1P for this reason alone.