I went to my local quilt shop for my birthday/Christmas present, thinking I was coming home with a Janome 11000 Special Edition SEWING - QUILTING - EMBROIDERY machine (all in one .. that's important) for about $1600 ... long, sad story short, my facts were very mixed up. My shop helped me figure out that I could get Janome's 6300 SEWING machine AND Janome's 200e EMBROIDERY machine for a 'little bit more' and satisfy those wants. So I did that. Love the MC6300P ... the 200e, not so much.
As the title states ... I am ready to move up. The 200e, for the PRICE, is waaaay too limiting. Whether you pay $499 online or the price I paid in my shop (several dollars more, and we'll leave it at that... ) you are stuck with the 5 x 5 hoop, max size. Sure you can get the 2 x 2 hoop .. Go to[...] and you will see what I mean. The first embroidery machine that will allow you to "upgrade" a hoop is the 300e. I don't want this to sound ALL bad .. if you don't want to do large embroidery, fine .. 5 x 5 is nice .. I did one of the included butterflies and it was GORGEOUS .. plenty big. Plus, all larger embroidery means is more thread and more thread means more money .. and larger, different embroidery projects means larger, different hoops and I think they are expensive ... But hey, I don't want to be limited if I don't have to be. I want that choice myself. I got the 200e at the time due to financial constraints ... My very sweet husband understands the flexibility of the upgrade and agrees it's worth the money. There won't be the need for another machine after this one .. the 350e looks like it does a'plenty!
The Janome brand is all I have been exposed to as far as embroidery machines. I have nothing to compare it to. This 200e seems to be a powerhouse .. it does skip a stitch or two here and there, but I think that's just because the machine works so hard. I had a problem with the thread bunching up at the needle twice, but according to Janome's OUTSTANDING CUSTOMER SERVICE, the large spool of Floriana thread I was using needed to be stood up instead of laid down on top of the machine. Fixed the problem completely.
You have to be careful about your project on the touchscreen. I didn't know about this, but it probably would have come up at my next 'free session' at my quilt shop -- 2 are included with the purchase of the machine .. nice thing about buying local instead of online -- as you are designing your own pattern, without drawing this out too far, the best I can say is, you can't go back. I made up something to put on a pillowcase which included a simple cross-stitch design and our initials ... the design was chosen and moved to the far right and then chosen again and flipped over and moved to the far left in order to fit our initals in between (that's an example of the onscreen editing you can do .. it's very easy) ... Once I had the design where I wanted it, I selected the ABC button for our initials, entered those, then got to see how it was going to look. I realized our initals were too large and I could not 'go back' ... I tried and lost everything. Easy enough for me to redo this time, but I realized, like on the computer, I should have ... you guessed it ... SAVED MY WORK !! Lesson learned. Don't know if this will be any different on the 350e, but I'm ready for it anyway :D (Oh, pillowcase design didn't work out because of my spacing :( .. point against 200e in the design dept .. can only resize designs in 10% increments VS 350e which works in 1% increments, I do believe)
This review is a little wordy, but it's Honest Abe. I like the machine, it does enough. Janome should include both hoops. I don't believe it's MSRP should be $999 .. it's not worth that. It JUST is worth $499. Put your hands on the machine before you buy it. I really don't recommend buying online something like this, unless you already know about it ~ it's just too big a purchase.
OH, and my 'auto-threader' .. it's a joke. I hate to say it like that, but it is. Works great on my 6300, but not the 200e.
