Husqvarna Viking Emerald 203

My grandma bought this long before I got into sewing, but she prefers her basic 70s Singer that's not as finicky. So she gave it to me.

This one works ok, and does a bunch of neat stitches. However, it has weird software things about it. Like when you hit the reverse button, it will make one stitch forward before going in reverse. Same happens going from reverse to forward. I often forget this when I don't use this machine in a while and mess up something.

Also, when you let up on the foot pedal to stop sewing, it finishes in either the needle up or needle down position, not in between. So if the needle is mid-stroke and you're hoping it'd stop before piercing your fabric, it often continues and messes things up because I forget this. My other machines are all mechanical with no computer and will stop on a dime mid-stroke, which is a very nice feature it turns out.

The machine is also prone to thinking it's jammed, when it's not. It beeps and makes you wait 10 seconds before you can sew again. Super annoying when you're in the zone. Sometimes it does this two or three times in a row. It's happened hundreds of times and the machine has only been jammed once or twice. It is indeed finicky like Grandma said.

With the letter stitches it does, it tends to mess up various letters consistently, dependent on your fabric. So you have to learn and intentionally pull the fabric in various ways, and manually complete parts of the letters if you want them perfect (or legible in some cases.)

That said, if you can work around the machine's quirks, it generally sews pretty nice stitches in light to medium fabrics. Some of the computerized stuff is pretty nice too.