I have a Janome 11000. It does a good job, but has been back to the dealer more times than I can count. At the time I bought it I was wanting to upgrade because my workhorse Janome is old and did not have all the bells and whistles that I thought I needed. However, if I had it to do it over again, I believe I'd buy a dedicated embroidery machine and just continue to use my old machines for everything else. Janome makes the MB4; Brother makes an "embroidery only" machine that I'd love to have, but all Brother dealers are too many miles and too much traffic away from my house.
Also, according to the dealer from whom I bought the Janome 11000, the low-end machines will not hold up to constant use, i.e., if you do a lot of M.E., you should have a high end (read "expensive") machine. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but that begs the question, "What if I spend a lot of $$$ on an embroidery machine and then I don't like machine embroidery?" I see "barely used" ones for sale all the time on-line.