I had a cheapy Brother from Costo and thought it was great, until I brought it in for cleaning and they let me borrow a low end Janome. Wow! what a difference. I loved how the feed dogs fed the fabric so much more evenly, and they seemed to be farther forward, so I didn't feel like I had to jam the fabric under the presser foot to get the machine to catch the fabric.
A week later, when my Brother was ready to pick up, I ended up trading it in for a 1yr old used Janome 6600. I LOVE this machine. Once I even got so excited that I kissed it! My husband got a real laugh out of that. Oh, and it's so much quieter than my old sewing machine. If I'm finishing something up while DH is watching TV, he doesn't need to turn up the TV to hear over the sewing machine.