I love my brothers, however in your situation i would go viking, because most other brands do offer alot of nice feature for the price. I paid 1800 for my babylock espire a feature rich machine, and i went to a show where the 550QE was discounted to 3k and I sewed on it in my class and for the money i felt it lacked a lot of features that should be provided for the cost of the machine. I also felt it didn't sew as well as my babylock espire. I was just not impressed with it at all for the price, way to overpriced IMHO. I have never sewed on a saphire so I have nothing to compare it to other than my brothers and babylocks which I love but if I only could choose between the 2 I would probably go with the saphire. I love the pivoting feature on my babylock