I bought this machine primarily for sewing (travel and quilt piecing classes); I already have a top/mid-line sewing embroidery machine, so the embroidery feature was simply an additional bonus for me. I've used it but not extensively. For sewing, I have the mid/top line machine in a cabinet, as well as a computerized sewing machine, both of which I love, but both are too bulky to travel to classes easily. I wanted something smaller/lighter, but with many of the features her bigger siblings have (start/stop, speed control, thread cutters and a good quality threader, as well as the ability to edit stitches and save the edits. The SE400 has all of these, and it sews beautifully. I loved it straight out of the box, where it sewed a perfect straight stitch and all its features worked just as the (easy to read) user manual explained. In fact, my sewing only machine is made by the other B-label sewing manufacturer and it and the SE400 are just close enough with their features to prompt me to declare the SE400 to be her younger, cuter sister. It's a fabulous sewing machine, before you ever even get to the embroidery features. And they are not problematic at all. To take the SE400 through her embroidery paces, I stitched out 8 embroidery quilt blocks, and created the quilt top with her. The quilting and binding were done on another machine but as you can see in the attached photo, the SE400 is well able to do everything I bought her for. I could not be more pleased.