I have a Juki TL98e. I think it has a 9 inch throat, which doesn't seem like much, but it's plenty. I was quilting the other day and realized that I had 75% of the queen sized quilt under the harp, and still didn't have any problem and I'm a newbie. For the money, I'd stick with 9-10 inch throat. My used Juki was $400 but it came with a bunch of extra stuff. Personally, I just wouldn't spend much more than that, but YMMV