Brother SE1900 vs PE800: Is the Sewing Half Worth It?

The short answer is yes, if you hem and mend. I bought the Brother SE1900 in October 2023 because I wanted one machine to embroider hand towels and also shorten Dale's trousers. I have never owned the PE800. My SE1900 sits on a six foot folding table in the spare bedroom upstairs, and the embroidery arm stays on most of the time. I take it off maybe once a month to hem something. That last sentence is most of the comparison.

If you only embroider, the PE800 is the cleaner choice. It is an embroidery-only machine with the same 5 by 7 inch field. You are not paying for sewing stitches you will not use, and you have one skill to learn instead of two. But if you want to hem, mend, sew a straight seam or replace a zipper without clearing the table, the sewing half is not a gadget. It is the reason I chose the Brother SE1900 over the PE800. I did not want two machines in a spare room with one wall outlet strip.

Here is the split I would give a friend at the craft fair table, before either of us starts talking about designs.

	Brother SE1900	Brother PE800
Core job	Sewing and embroidery in one machine	Embroidery only
Embroidery field	5 by 7 inches	5 by 7 inches
Sewing bed	Yes, ready for seams and hems	No sewing bed
Sewing stitches	240 built-in stitches, including 10 styles of auto-size buttonholes	No sewing stitches
Mending and hemming	Yes, on the same machine	No
Switching between jobs	Remove the embroidery arm to sew, then put it back	No switching, it is an embroidery machine
Learning curve	Two skills on one machine	One skill, embroidery only
What you pay for	Sewing and embroidery capability	Embroidery only, so no sewing features to pay for
Best for	Someone who hems, mends and embroiders	Someone who only embroiders

Where the Brother SE1900 Wins

Where the Brother SE1900 wins is the sewing bed. The machine has 240 built-in sewing stitches, including 10 styles of auto-size buttonholes. I do not use most of them. I use a straight stitch, a zigzag for a quick finish, and the buttonhole setting maybe twice a year. That is enough. In October 2023 I bought the machine with a pack of HBI tear away stabilizer, and within about two weeks I was practicing monograms on scrap towels. The sewing side got used right away because Dale had trousers that needed shortening and a tote bag seam that had given out. I did not have to move the embroidery arm to a shelf and set up a second machine. I pulled the arm off, hemmed, and put it back.

The other win is the table. My sewing room is the spare bedroom upstairs. I have one six foot folding table against the window, a rolling cart for thread, a corner shelf for blanks and one wall outlet strip. A combo machine fits that room. One power cord, one manual, one place to keep the feet and the hoop. The SE1900 is 22.1 pounds, so it is not a machine I move casually, but it does not need a second table. The 3.2 inch LCD touchscreen is how I pick designs, and the USB port is how I bring extra designs from my laptop. The advanced needle threader and drop-in top bobbin are the two features I touch every time I sit down. Those are not sewing-side features in my house. They are embroidery-side features that make the whole machine easier to live with.

The sewing half is also the reason I can mend without a production. A friend from church texts about a torn tote strap. I can run a seam, turn the bag right side out and hand it back. I am not a tailor. I sewed garments as a teenager, stopped for decades, and started machine embroidery in fall 2023. The SE1900 was my first machine after that gap. The sewing side is forgiving of that history. It is not the reason to buy the machine if you only embroider, but it is the reason the machine earns its table space in my house.

Where the Brother PE800 Wins

Where the Brother PE800 wins is simplicity. If you never sew, the sewing bed is dead weight. The PE800 is an embroidery-only machine with the same 5 by 7 inch field, so you are not giving up embroidery space to get the simpler machine. You are also not learning to thread a sewing machine, wind a bobbin for sewing or choose a stitch for a seam you will never run. I have never owned the PE800. I chose the SE1900 because I wanted to hem and mend on the same machine. If I had a sewing machine I already trusted and only wanted monograms, the PE800 would be the cleaner buy.

The PE800 also stays set up for embroidery. That sounds small until you have a stack of towels to monogram and a pair of trousers on the ironing board. With the SE1900, I take the embroidery arm off maybe once a month. It is not hard. It is still a switch. The PE800 does not ask you to choose between the two jobs because it only has one job. If your work is names on hand towels, fleece baby blankets, canvas totes and cloth napkins, and you send the hemming to someone else, that single focus is a real advantage.

The last PE800 win is what you pay for. The SE1900 includes 240 sewing stitches and 8 included feet. If you will not use them, they are features you own and store. The PE800 is the machine for the person who wants the embroidery side and nothing else. That is not a knock on the SE1900. It is the honest split. The combo is worth it when the sewing half has a job in your house. It is not worth it because a spec sheet has more lines on it.

What the Sewing Half Does in My Spare Room

I use the sewing half more than I expected. I hem Dale's trousers. I mend seams on canvas totes before I embroider a monogram. I run a quick straight stitch on cloth napkins so the edges are secure before they go under the hoop. I have used the buttonhole setting on a simple sewing project, not on anything I sold. The machine has never needed repair or service. The 25 year limited warranty is on the spec sheet, and I have not had to test it. That is the boring truth of a combo machine. Most days it is an embroidery machine. A few days a month it is a sewing machine. The switch is the point.

The embroidery side is 138 built-in designs and 11 embroidery fonts. I mostly use the built-in fonts for monograms. Extra designs go from my laptop to the machine on a USB stick. The 3.2 inch LCD touchscreen is how I choose them. The machine does not trim jump stitches, so I trim them by hand with Singer snips tied to the handle area. That is one of my two annoyances. The other is the 5 by 7 inch field. The field is the same on the PE800, so it is not a reason to pick one machine over the other. It is a reason to know what you are buying.

The 5 by 7 field handles hand towel monograms, names on bath towels, most of a fleece baby blanket and a canvas tote front. It does not handle a large back design on a jacket, and I do not stitch jackets. When a design is too big, I either split it or choose a smaller design. I do not have a cap frame and I do not embroider caps. If you want a larger field, neither the SE1900 nor the PE800 as described here is the answer. That is not a flaw in the comparison. It is the boundary of it.

The sewing half is not a bonus feature. It is the reason I can hem Dale's trousers at noon and stitch a monogram on a towel at two.

The Details I Checked Before I Bought

The SE1900 is 22.1 pounds and measures 23.19 inches deep by 13.43 inches wide by 11.54 inches high. That is a machine that stays on the table. It shipped with one 5 by 7 hoop, the embroidery arm and the embroidery foot. It also includes 8 presser feet. I use the embroidery foot and a standard sewing foot. The other feet live in a drawer. I am not going to pretend I use all 8. If you are a garment sewer, the extra feet may matter. For my work, the number is not the reason to buy. The 25 year limited warranty is the other detail I checked, and I have not needed it.

The hoop set I bought in March 2024 tells the rest of the field story. It has four hoops, and the 5 by 12 has never been used because the SE1900 field is 5 by 7. It stays on the hanging buckle. The 4 by 4 and the second 5 by 7 do almost all the work. I keep one sheet of HBI tear away stabilizer under a hand towel and a clear water-soluble topper on top. Thick bath towels get two HBI sheets doubled. A single sheet is thin for dense designs on thick towels. That is my only complaint about the stabilizer. The field limit is the machine's limit, not the stabilizer's.

Who Should Buy Which

Buy the Brother SE1900 if you want to hem, mend and sew a straight seam on the same table where you embroider. That is my situation. I make gifts and fill small orders from friends, church members and neighbors. I do not keep a spreadsheet and I am not going to tell you a machine will build you a business. What I can tell you is that a combo machine keeps one table, one power cord and one manual in a spare room with one outlet strip. If you already have a sewing machine you like, the math changes. Then the PE800 makes more sense than paying for a second sewing bed.

Buy the Brother PE800 if embroidery is the only job. It has the same 5 by 7 inch field, it is embroidery only, and it does not ask you to learn the sewing side. It is the cleaner machine for names on towels, monograms on blankets and a tote bag front. It is also the machine for someone who has a sewing machine in another room and does not want to move it. I have never owned the PE800, so I will not pretend to know how it feels after two years. I can tell you the SE1900 has been on my table since October 2023 and I have not needed service. The choice comes down to whether the sewing half has a job in your house.

Skip both if you need automatic jump-stitch trimming or a field larger than 5 by 7. I trim by hand. I split or shrink designs. That is the trade I made. If you are not willing to make it, save for a different class of machine instead of buying either of these and hoping the work changes.