Originally Posted by thepolyparrot
My next embroidery machine is almost certainly going to be a Brother. Some of the Brothers are identical to some of the Babylock machines. The Brother machines have all the features and reliability of the high-end machines, but they cost considerably less. They take standard needles, bobbins and attachments.
I will probably buy an embroidery-only machine because I have somewhere around 30 machines in the house and almost all of them sew very well - I only used the sewing ability of my Futura embroidery machine once or twice, just to play with it.
Brother has a very good reputation and their machines usually have very good consumer reviews. I have two Brother machines which have been worth their weight in fat quarters for several years - and both of them were very inexpensive.
I doubt very strongly that I would ever buy another Futura embroidery machine - in fact, I don't think I'd ever buy any of the SVP consortium, again. (Singer, Viking, Pfaff)
Brother and Babylock are made by the same manufacturer so I asked my Babylock dealer why would I want to spend the extra money on a B/L. I, personally, think Brothers have great machines (although I've never owned one) but am told the B/L's are built better with more metal parts opposed to some plastic parts on Brother machines. I love my Babylock Esante (an older model) and it's only been in the shop once (this year) for service and cleaning. I broke one too many needles and cracked the bobbin case.
The embroidery section of my machine is very easy to learn and use. the Ellegante II (step down from the Ellisomo) has great editing features built right onto the color screen and uses the jump drive. Mine has to be connected via usb cable.
If you're not going to do a lot of embroidery (like me), you don't need a high-end machine. Babylock has a couple of good mid-range machines (around $1000) that also sew. You could designate this as an embroidery machine and keep it up all the time.
Sorry if I'm rambling but buying an embroidery machine needs different decisions. If I had to do it over again, I would buy an embroidery machine for stand-alone and would probably use it more often. It's a pain to keep switching it around then I can't really sew while I'm waiting for the embroidery to get done.
Hope this helps. Have fun checking out all the cool machines.