I've heard very good things about this machine and its predecessor the SE350. Its definitely huge bang for your buck because you can't even by a quality sewing machine only for much less than $300 and this offers a thread-cutter, lots of stitches PLUS embroidery. I don't consider this a down-side but the 4x4 embroidery field is the smallest available. There are still thousands of designs that will fit your hoop and the quality of embroidery is as good as any. Its easy to use/learn, compact, portable and gets high marks. The sewing part of it is good so excellent little machine that could serve you well even if at some point you want to trade up to a machine w/ a larger hoop for your embroideries. The only real learning curve is more about proper hooping and use of stabilizers. For thread, many people do buy starter kits but on sale, if possible. I started with 10-12 basic colors and then added others depending on the colors I needed that I didn't have. That was 15 years ago and I just bought some here and there until i now have about 60 colors some of which are the original spools but I don't do a lot of embroidery and never have. I have PED-Basic which is VERY simplistic program that will write to a card but if you don't have that, you may need some means to be able to view your designs on your computer so you can transfer them to the USB stick for your machine to read. You won't need that right away because you won't have so many designs stored on your computer to start. Its great fun and that machine is a real bargain and cute too.