Lots of good advice from every angle here for you to consider. Depending on how good you are at a sewing machine and how much you really grasp what the dealer's representative is showing you about the machine (and how desperately she/he needs a sale today)...I have bought one machine "new" in my entire life--an Elna special edition the year I was 50--the best machine that EVER came down the pike. The rest are all used that I have picked up at yard sales and flea markets and I spend my time enjoying fixing them up and giving them to someone I love. But my Elna (TOL at the time) is everything that I love and use, plus quiet. Quiet is very important to me. I did buy a used (on CL) HV Designer I for the embroidery functions about four years ago, and still do not know how to use it. The dealer has given me a couple of lessons on it, and would help me more, if we could get together; she is about 70 miles from here and it means a lot of planning, packing, etc. to go in for a lesson. So I still don't know how to use a machine that probably cost the original owner over $l0,000. So far, just eye candy in my sewing room for me. I keep saying "maybe next week" and next week my husband says "time for us to take a road trip, don'tyathink..."we are both retired, and all the grandkids are in school right now, so when we are freed up from the babysitting, we take off.
Good luck in your search, and do post for us what you finally come up with.