The question is do you feel you know what your wife wants in a machine enough to pick one out for her. I have a brother vseries that I adore and the only other one I would look at my self would be a Janome 9400 both very different machines with different features. There are so many that have different features that make each one sew a little differently. This gives people a lot of options which in turn makes it hard to choose for a person, especially one who has never sewn before to choose without knowing what's important. I think the gift box idea is a lovely idea if you don't know the specific model your wife dreams about. Almost everyone has a dream machine