The Singer brand is confusing...but i think has been steadily improving over last couple of years. They now have the very popular Janome 1600p and Janome 6500 as models S16 and S18. A couple of their models of late have been well reviewed even though as a brand they have a pretty bad reputation to overcome....it does look like its getting better and not all of their current models are necessarily bad choices, but its still best to thoroughly research any Singer model you're interested in.