Brother PE550D Embroidery Machine Review
This embroidery machine comes with 125 in-built decorative designs, with 45 Disney designs. There are also 3 Japanese and 6 English fonts, making a total of 9 fonts for personalization and monogramming. It also has 3.2” Sew Smart easy-to-view LCD color touch screen allowing you to preview your designs in alternate colors before you start to stitch.
Brother PE550D embroidery machine has a lot more features that make it an excellent machine. Read on to find out more.
Large, Color LCD Touch Screen Display Screen
Contents
This machine comes with a Sew Smart color LCD touch screen display that’s as big as 3.2”. This allows you to fully view your embroidery designs in color before you start to stitch. You’re also able to change the thread colors of the embroidery designs very easily using the in-built color palette to aid your preview before you start to stitch.
4” X 4” Embroidery Field and Other Embroidery Features
The most popular embroidery design size for most embroiders is the 4” x 4” embroidery design. This machine comes with a 4” x 4” embroidery field. It also includes built-in alignment tools and a grid sheet which is useful to help you align the position of the needle with your design, so you can place it precisely on the fabric you’re sewing.
It also has a choice of as much as 125 built-in embroidery designs for you to choose from. 45 of these 125 designs are Disney characters, so you can relive the Disney magic. There are also other designs such as floral, borders, kids, holiday and alphabet designs for you.
This machine indeed gives you a lot of options, and this also includes the font sizes. You have 9 in-built embroidery lettering fonts that you can choose from. These fonts also come in different sizes, large, medium, and small sizes. There are also different cases and characters. There’s the lower case and the capital case, and you also have the symbol and numeric characters. All you’re left to do is choose the one that best suits the project you’re working on.
The ability to edit the embroidery lettering means that you can adjust the embroidery lettering fonts in different ways, including aligning the text in curves or at an angle, increasing or decreasing the space between the letters, placing text on multiple lines, and much more.
Brother PE550D Embroidery Machine Features and Description
- Automatic needle threader: threading on this machine, like many other brother machines, is extremely easy. The machine has an in-built automatic needle threader which does the threading work for you by simply touching a lever. This is especially important for you if you have to change threads multiple times for your embroidery design.
- LCD touch screen: this LCD display allows you to view your designs before you start to sew.
- 4” x 4” embroidery field
- 125 embroidery designs including 45 of your favorite Disney and Disney-Pixar characters, and other designs such as the holiday, decorative, alphabet, borders designs, etc.
- A USB port for you to import designs: with this embroidery machine, you’re able to import .pes embroidery design files of your choice, using the in-built USB port. This means that you can always increase the amount of embroidery design options you have on the machine by simply adding more with the USB port.
- Embroidery lettering fonts: PE550D allows you to personalize your creation with a wide selection of embroidery lettering fonts, as much as 9. 6 of the fonts are English and the other 3 are Japanese. You’re also able to choose between capital or a lower case, and also the different numeric and symbol characters. You also have an option on the font size, with the large, medium and small font size to choose from.
- Tools and supplies: this machine comes with a number of tools and supplies that you need for this machine, including 4″x4″ embroidery hoop, embroidery arm, and saw embroidery foot. Other supplies include 4 bobbins, 3 of which are pre-wound with embroidery bobbin thread, disk-shaped screwdriver, 3-piece needle set, 4 spool caps, large screwdriver, seam ripper, scissors, cleaning brush, power cord, spool net, and machine dust cover.
- A bi-lingual user manual: this machine has a quick start guide and operation manual that comes in both English and Spanish. The manual is very easy to comprehend and is your first point of call for any issues with the machine.
- 25 years limited warranty: Like most of the brother products, this machine comes with a 25-year limited warranty, which is usually an indication of the durability and long-lasting nature of the machine. They also offer free online technical and customer phone support for product life.
- Project gallery
- Style embellishment: you can use this fashionable in-built feature to elevate your style.
Pros and Cons of Brother PE550D Embroidery Machine
Like all other sewing machines made by Brother, this machine possesses all of the features which it highlights and also delivers on its promises. The setup is easy and it’s also very easy to use in creating beautiful designs on your fabric. This machine is so easy to use that you could even make a kid learn embroidery with it.
The limitless choice of design which it offers makes it an interesting machine, especially as you’re able to add more to it using the USB port.
But like other machines, it also has it’s pros and cons which are states below.
Pros
- Brother PE550D is user-friendly, easy to operate and set up.
- It comes with multiple design options, with 125 embroidery designs built in the machine.
- The Disney designs are of very high quality and are very subtle on the machine.
- The LCD display allows you to choose your design and make your desired edits. This important screen feature is also very easy to use.
- It usually comes with a box with numerous useful tools and accessories already listed in the paragraphs above.
- You’re able to use the USB port feature of the machine to upload numerous additional designs to the ones that already came with the machine, increasing your options.
- Bi-lingual operations manual, which could aid language and communication barriers.
- The machine is small, compact and lightweight and this aids its portability. It is very convenient for transporting it from one place to another as well.
- It is affordable with a price of around $350, especially in comparison to other embroidery machines. This makes it a budget-friendly option for embroidery making.
- It is durable and comes with a 25-year warranty and brother support for the machine.
Cons
- Single embroidery hoop size: the machine has a 4″ x 4″ embroidery hoop size which limits it a little.
- A machine is basically an embroidery machine, so, it’s limited and can’t do any other thing but embroider.
- It might show you error messages.
- The working area is limited.
Customer Reviews and Scores
The Brother PE550D embroidery machine is an outstanding machine built for convenience and easy to use. The fact that it is affordable and sold for as low as it is in comparison to other embroidery machines.
The number of interesting features which it has for its price makes it a good choice for users. And it’s definitely the best machine in its price category. It could even compete with other embroidery machines at higher prices.
As at the time of writing this review, there are already 88 reviews of this machine with most of them being positive and the machine scoring 4.3 stars out of a possible 5 stars. This means that most of the users are well satisfied, therefore, giving it this impressive rating.
One of the users to rate this machine 5-star claims that they are “absolutely glad to get the machine”, even though many people have told them that they would end up regretting buying an embroidery machine at such a cheap price. Another user commented saying, ” I was so glad I bought it.” Another satisfied user says that “it’s wonderful” and suits their need for pencil toppers, tea towels, and other small projects.
As the case usually is with all products, however, there were some unsatisfied users who also made their grievances known. Another user describes the machine as defective and that they find the machine “very difficult to use”, and are ” very dissatisfied”. Another grieved user describes it as “extremely unreliable”, ” constantly displaying an error message”, and is far from being user-friendly. Another user claimed that they were disappointed and had to return it.
If you go through most of the reviews of this machine on Amazon, you’ll discover that of the 88 people that rated and reviewed the machine, 67% of them gave it a 5-star. While another 12% gave it a 4-star. This means that 79% of the reviewers think it’s a good machine. that should be enough to convince you of how good the machine is. Only 6% of the raters gave a 1-star and another 4% gave it a 2-star rating, making up just 10% of the total reviews.
Conclusion
In summary, the Brother PE550D embroidery machine is another highly rated machine by the Brother brand. It is known for its affordability, durability, portability, convenience, and ease of use. Like many of brother machines, it has an automatic needle threader that makes threading the machine an easy task. It also has many important embroidery features such as the embroidery designs and embroidery lettering fonts with different sizes.
This easy-to-use brother machine, like many others, comes with free online technical support and free phone support with 25 years limited warranty. The instruction manual and operation guide is also written in English and Spanish, and are written in simple terms that you can comprehend. So, you make the manual your friend if you have any issues with the machine. One mistake that I’ve seen people make with this machine is wanting to sew with it and being angry that it can only embroider. Well, this might be one of the cons of this machine, so, you only buy one if you want to embroider. There are machines that can probably do both. So, you should get one of those if you want to sew and embroider at the same time. But this is an embroider-only machine, and it’s a highly recommended one.
Crafting has always been a deep-seated passion of mine, one that has flourished and evolved over the years.
I've dedicated considerable time to both studying and practicing in the realm of fashion and sewing, amassing a wealth of experience and skills.
It brings me great joy to share these insights and experiences with you all, hoping to inspire and foster a similar passion for the art of sewing.
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