I have had a number of low end machines ( and some of these have been wonderful machines so I'm not knocking them ) I used these for piecing and my Juki for free motion quilting and that worked great for me. I just got a Pfaff. I use it for embroidery and some piecing. I guess my point is those lower end machines can be GREAT for piecing and sometimes quilting. You need to decide exactly what you want that second machine to do and go from there.