Updated my MK4S to 7.0.0 last night and the color thing is nicer than I expected

I flashed mine over USB instead of the web interface since the printer lives in the garage where the wifi is patchy. Went fine, but I made the classic mistake of forgetting the MMU has its own firmware. Spent a confused half hour with the printer updated and the MMU still on the old version before the error message on the screen clued me in. Updated that one over USB as well and everything lined up after that. Smart mapping has been the standout for me too. I run PETG in slot one and PLA in slots two through four, and it sorted a four-color job correctly without me touching a thing. One quirk I ran into: it checks the filament type but not how much is left on the spool, so it happily assigned a nearly empty slot and I ran out halfway through a long print. Now I check spool levels before I start anything multi-material.

The color prompt I actually left off. My slots basially never change, so it felt like extra button presses, but I can see the appeal if you swap filaments around often. Still on the fence about updating the MMU3 to be honest, since my prints were alredy coming out fine, but the mapping alone has saved me some real annoyance.

I held off on 7.0.0 for a couple weeks because my MK4S is my workhorse and I print daily for a side business, so any downtime is annoying. Ended up doing it Sunday night when the queue was empty and honestly the update itself was uneventful, which is exactly what I wanted. One thing I did that I'd suggest to anyone with jobs running long: wait for a print to finish before starting the flash, since it forces you to cancel otherwise and I nearly lost a four hour print by getting impatient. My take on the color prompt is the opposite of the original poster's though. I turned it off after two days. When I'm doing quick filament swaps between test prints, being asked what color I just loaded gets old fast, and I know what's in the extruder because I put it there thirty seconds ago. I can see the appeal for someone juggling five slots on the MMU, but for single tool use it just added a button press to every change. The smart mapping sounds genuinely useful for multi material work. I mostly print single color PETG and PLA, so I'm not the target user there, but if it remembers tool assignments between prints that alone might justify the update for people who do a lot of color changes. I'll probably leave mine on this version and see how the next patch lands before touching any settings beyond what I already changed.

The PVA preset is what pushed me to finally try water soluble supports. I'd been avoiding it for ages because setting up a new material always felt like a chore with all the manual fiddling. Ran a print with PETG parts on a PVA interface layer and the supports just let go in a bucket of water overnight. Cleanest breaks I've ever had. If you've got the MMU already, give it a shot on somthing with nasty overhangs before you write the preset stuff off as boring.

I'm on an original MK4, not the S, and I keep second-guessing wether this update is even meant for me. The firmware page lists it under the Buddy printers so I assume yes, but I've been burned before by flashing the wrong thing on other gear. Did anyone here run it on the older model and notice anything wierd? I mostly print PLA single color so half the new stuff won't apply to me anyway, but if the load prompt works the same on one tool I might give it a go this weekend.