It would be very important to find a dealer if possible for them to allow you to demo it. Especially when you don't know what to look for or what questions to ask. Every machine made will have some saying good things about and some saying bad things about it. The problem is, you don't know if the bad things are due to user error or the machine. Some machines you can trick into doing what you want like changing the thread position or slowing it down and all of a sudden a picky machine will take thread that before it was shredding. Plus, at a dealer you usually get great classes