Monoprice Joule 3D Printer DIY Assembly Kit Expired

Rebadged Aquila. For the money it's definitely hard to beat but unless you're looking at it as a stepping stone or experimentation platform it might be worth jumping to another upgraded design.

"The Flashforge Voxelab Aquila is yet another Ender-3 clone – in this case, a near carbon copy of the Ender-3 v2. It copied all of its flaws and yet added new ones – so the question is, what justification is there for this printer to exist when it's bringing absolutely nothing new to the table?" from Tom's 3D

https://toms3d.org/2021/08/13/its...ab-aquila/

Is it any good or will it be a source of frustration for a first timer?

I have both the Ender3 (non V2) and the Aquila and find that the Aquila prints very well out the box. I've had the Ender since 2018 and picked up the Aquila late last year on an open-box deal off Aliexpress. I'd say for $80, this is a pretty solid deal if you're in the market for an Ender 3 style bed-slinger printer.

Having owned both, I do have a few observations that I'd like to point out:

While the printers appear nearly identical to each other (Ender 3 v2/Aquila), there are a few differences such as a different X axis carriage which does not allow all Ender 3 aftermarket part cooling, direct-drive mods, BL-touch mounts, etc. to attach. The hotend itself however, is the same as the Ender 3 so parts for it (heatbreaks, nozzles, PTFE connectors, and so forth.) will still work. There's many existing Aquila mods out there, but obviously nowhere near as many as for the Ender.
The Aquila stock part cooling fan was insanely loud out the box. At standby the fan was louder than my Ender 3 at 100% fan speed.
Some of the Aquila mainboards can be flashed with aftermarket firmware that mirrors much of what the Ender 3 v2 interface looks like. There are also printable mounts to allow the screen to be attached at 90 degrees (like the Ender 3 v2).
All of the wires going into my mainboard on the Aquila were soldered (not good) and it would be highly advisable to either cut, strip and re-attach all soldered wires, or crimp ferrules if you have the tool to do it.
For whatever reason, the Aquila doesn't come with a pair of side cutters. This is a pretty much mandatory tool for trimming filament so plan on picking up a pair. I don't know why they didn't just put the same crappy blue-handled ones from the Ender 3 in the box, but oh well.

Build quality seems to be about the same between machines, but I am having lots of problems lately with the hotend on the Aquila. I suspect either the thermocouple or heater cartridge is failing and will need to be replaced. Luckily, the parts are cheap (I picked up an entire replacement hotend for $5) so I'll hopefully be back working again soon.

One place that I did have problems right away with was that the screw holding the hotend to the X carriage was cross-threaded from the factory. I removed the hotend to install a bi-metal heatbreak and the aluminum threads came out with the screw. All my attempts to find a replacement Aquila X carriage failed so I decided to replace it with an Ender 3 carriage. I actually preferred this anyway since it allowed full use of all Ender 3 hotend mods and the Ender 3 carriage can be picked up for under $5 most of the time. However, I did also have to design and print a modified X-Axis endstop cover [thingiverse.com] to allow everything to work properly.

All this to say...for an entry level machine, it prints great and for $80 it's hard to beat. Firmware support isn't as great as the Ender 3 v2 but if you really want extra bells and whistles, throw Octoprint on it and leave it alone. It can be modded to your hearts content and since most of the design is nearly identical to the Ender 3 v2, you can find lots of help and support online if you run into problems.