I haven't purchased a refurbished sewing machine, but I did buy my HP printer refurbished, and it has lasted over 10 years, still going strong. I also purchased my Reliable iron refurbished. Both came with a warranty equal to the warranty on new. My take on it (at least with these appliances) is that there is always the possibility that a new item will fail because it has not been tested. These refurbished items had probably failed originally, but had received repair and additional testing, so they were probably less likely to have problems down the road.