<p>I've been using a resin printer for some time now, and am looking for a filament printer to compliment it. It will mostly be used to print scenery or bases to match 3-6&quot; models printer on the resin printer.</p>
<p>I'm aiming for an entry level printer, or possible a mid level one on black Friday sale if I can find one.</p>
<p>Should I limit myself to looking for one with a heated bed or auto-bed leveling, or should I mark these down as being bonus features that are nice to have but which are not essential for the kind of printing that I will be doing?</p>
<p>I will probably be using basic budget filament to print items under 6&quot;. Probably no more than 2 prints a week.</p>

Most "auto-leveling" is not leveling but compensation for a non-flat or non-level bed surface. It's helpful to beginners who don't understand bed leveling or evaluating bed surface flatness and replacing a bad bad, for the sake of being able to get started without prints failing to adhere, but it will necessarily give you moderate to severe accuracy problems in the first cm or so of your print unless you manually level the bed right too. (This is as opposed to real three-point, three-motor leveling systems, which
do
really level and are great, but won't be found on entry-level printers.) Decide whether you want to spend money on that accordingly.
Personally, I find heated bed unnecessary unless you'll be printing ABS, ASA, or maybe PETG (it's hard but not impossible to print PETG without it). Heating the bed kinda makes PLA print worse (at least there are tradeoffs; it does help adhesion though), and flexible materials never need heat. However, pretty much all popular printers nowadays offer a heated bed anyway, so I don't think you'd be saving anything by going without it, and you're likely enough to want it at some point that you should just get it.