I have a lot of quilting friends who swear by Brother embroidery machines. And they tell me to buy the larger hoop size, 5-7 inches not the 4 inches for a starter machine. Machine embroidery is not cheap. The expense is not the machine it's the supplies. One of my friends wins awards for her machine embroidery and she uses up to five layers of tear away stabilizer. No puckers and her embroidery stays soft. The others are too cheap to use a lot of the supplies and their work looks like it. Some are so stiff they won't bend.