I have a Babylock Enterprise 10 needle. I went from a single needle to a 6 needle now the 10 needle. This was over 12 years. There is a huge learning curve and it can be very frustrating at times. It takes a ton of practice to get the hang of it. A lot of people think embroidery is easy, just hoop the project and go. Well, it's not that easy, you need different stabilizers for different fabrics, lots of threads and lots of patience. If you don't have the proper stabilizer for your project you will get lots of puckers and wrinkling on the project. No amount of ironing will get them out. Hooping the project is another issue and an acquired skill. Hoop a t-shirt too tight and when it's unhooped you get puckers, hoop something too loose and you get fold overs, and puckers. The type of stabilizer you need depends on how many stitches your design has. It also depends on the type of fabric you are embroidering on. Not all designs do well on all types of fabric. The hoops have screws so if you have arthritis it can make it harder to tighten and loosen them when hooping. Of course there are aftermarket hoops and all kinds of things you can buy. It helps immensely if you are computer savvy and can read a manual and follow it and if you are good at self teaching and have a great memory. The multi needle machines weigh 80 pounds and up, so you cannot take it to class and it's difficult to take it in for service. Even the bigger single needle machines weigh a ton. The cost of annual service on my 10 needle is about $300.00.
You said you don't want to be frustrated here is an example: I did a test sew out on a shirt last week for a gift. I sewed it on scrap fabric similar to the shirt fabric. I did 5 sew outs with 5 different types and layers of stabilizer. After each sew out I rinsed it in hot water and dried it to see how it looked after being laundered. Only one was satisfactory so I proceeded to sew it on the shirt to be gifted. Turned out really good, so I washed it and it came out puckered. So basically what happened was the shirt to be gifted had a different fabric content than the fabric I test sewed on and it shrank up more than I expected it to. Talk about frustrating. This can also happen on thin flimsy fabric very easily. I normally do prewash all my projects before I embroider on them, that is if they are for me, my hubby or family members. A lot of people do not because they are gifts. It's important to me to know what the final project will look like after it's washed. Fabric types and quality of garments all shrink in different ways.
I ended up going to Kohls, buying her another shirt, thankfully they had one in stock, went home washed it and iron it and and proceeded to embroider it last night. Talk about last minute.
My suggestion to you would be to go to a dealer and test drive a Brother PE770 or any other inexpensive single needle embroidery machine. Sit down and play with the buttons, thread it completely, don't just tie a knot and pull the new thread thru, hoop some fabric and pick a design out from the built in designs on the machine. Have them show you how to back up stitches if the thread breaks and how to edit designs on the screen like changing the colors. Also have them show you how to get designs that you purchase from the internet into the machine. Do not let them push all the buttons, you need to be the one to drive the machine. They will try to hurry you along and of course sell you something big, fancy and costly. The PE770 is about $500. - $700. it will only embroider a 5x7 design but that's perfect for a beginner. Also, it's easy to resale a smaller inexpensive machine. Another to consider is embroider software, it allows you to edit designs that you purchase on the internet. You can change colors, change the size, rotate them, mirror them, do lettering and a bunch of other stuff. Some of these programs cost $1000. and up. There are some programs you can buy online for a few hundred dollars that work just as good. The multi needles are very expensive, my 10 needle with the stand and a few other things was $16,000. Some of the big fancy single needle run around $12,000. I hope this helps, Merry Christmas.