The Quality Differences in PLA

First, this is from MY observations. Your mileage many vary.

I've bought four different brands of PLA since I started 3D printing and my results have mostly been good. My most recent challenging prints have been Polypanels. I struggled trying to get them to print so they would go together properly and finally found the breakthrough in the Creawsome Mod for Cura and the Ender 3. You can read more about this under the Creality Ender 3 Experiences section.

I have not paid more than $25 for a kilogram of PLA (yet) and I have found that price does have some influence on quality. Here's my ranking of what I've tried, from lowest to highest quality:

• Generic PLA ($14). This was a disaster. I had a desire to have some bright orange filament and found "Luminous Orange" in a very generic filament on eBay. I ordered it and it came fairly quickly. The word "Luminous" is a quite a stretch for this color. It's really pretty dull. I gave it a try anyway. It seemed to print OK for a while and then I started having odd problems. It turned out that it was clogging up the works and I had to disassemble and clean the hot end. This spool of filament now sits on the shelf and I will not likely ever use it again. I also don't want to even give this to anybody knowing what it may do. I MAY try it on something that I print with the 0.8 mm nozzle.
• MatterHackers Build Series ($20). This seems to be pretty decent and for most things it works fine. It does NOT do well with Polypanels though. The strength of the print isn't as good as my higher rated filaments. I ordered my second spool of filament from MatterHackers (PolyMaker's PolyLite in red) so I decided to try some of their own filament. I'm not unhappy with their filament but it's just not suitable for something that needs some strength.
• Hatchbox PLA ($20 on Amazon). This was actually my FIRST filament (in silver) and it has performed quite well. I have a lot of parts printed for the Mini Delta in this filament and I continue to print things with it. It may very well be the first spool that I run out. I'll certainly buy another one. This does print Polypanels successfully.
• PolyMaker PolyLite ($25). This has become my favorite of the inexpensive PLA filaments. I've printed a lot of printer enhancements (for both printers) in the red I ordered back in the beginning. I've recently bought a couple more spools (orange and teal) and I expect I will buy more. I know this is the best filament I have and when I have trouble printing something I switch off to this to get the job done. It prints Polypanels quite nicely and was the filament I was using to work out my problems printing the Polypanels.