Yeah that's totally fair. I've never had to do that (except hotend but that was by choice) on my Creality but I've had to put a bunch of work into it to get it consistent. Prusa and Bambu are about as consistent and print out-of-the-box as you can get with a 3dprinter.
Yikes that's bad. Looking at the price and style of the Artillery Genius, you may be well served by an Ender 3v3 SE. The Bambu A1 is also really good but they're pretty closed and have done some shenanigans lately to fully close. If you don't mind some extra money the Prusa Mk4 is great.
Yeah you can only use their slicer. They did make a plug in to allow the use of other slicers but it still goes through their systems. After the backlash, they did implement a "developer mode" but there's some downsides to that. This should give a good overview.
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https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/21/24349031/bambu-3d-printer-update-authentication-filament-subscription-lock-answers