Brother ST371HD Review

The ST371HD is a low-cost machine — and a low-scoring one. Nothing really jumped out as spectacular, and this machine's performance was mediocre across the board.

Sewing

While the Brother ST371HD completed each of the stitches in our test, we found them to be lackluster. The long straight stitch bunched up the majority of the fabrics we tested, leading to an aesthetically displeasing appearance. However, this machine excelled at a long straight stitch on jersey knit cotton, actually doing the best out of all the machines that we tested.

We also noticed a few flaws on the zigzag stitch, with the bottom thread being much too tight to allow the stitch to stretch at all, effectively defeating one of the major points of using a zigzag stitch.

This machine was average when it came to scalloped stitches, as well as sewing on a zipper, though it did leave some off stitches around the zipper stop.

Ease of Use

The directions on this machine were clear and easy to understand for simple tasks, and the average tension is noted. This product does not mark the average stitch length and width like some of the other models we looked at, but it was the only one that labeled which direction to turn the thread tension knob to adjust it up or down.

The light provided by this machine cast a somewhat annoying shadow, and was definitely a little too dim to be the only source of light when sewing. The thread cutter on the ST371HD is the typical, shielded blade on the side of the machine. The ST371HD can also do automatic or pedal-less sewing. Additionally, the needle always stops in the down position.

Ease of Setup

This machine was easy enough to thread, and even excelled slightly when it came to threading the needle. This style of needle threader was slightly easier to use than the one on some of the other Brother machines.

It was easy to set up and thread the machine to wind a bobbin, but the wound bobbin was slightly irregular, with the thread not moving up and down in a perfectly consistent way. It was also difficult to install the wound bobbin, requiring you to fit it in the notch in the bobbin housing, with it being unclear where to thread it. This would be especially hard for those with limited eyesight or dexterity.

Button work

The ST371HD lacked when it came to button work. We initially had a little trouble setting up the machine, as the directions were a bit unclear on what to do. This product makes a 1-step buttonhole, but it will not stop automatically on the final step, making the final step prone to human errors.

We did like that the buttonhole presser did not unintentionally catch on the fibers of the fabric, making it less prone to bunching, but that's about it. The quality of the buttonhole produced was subpar when we compared to its competition, and we found it amazingly difficult to line up the buttonhole in the desired spot.

Value

While being an economical option, the ST371HD fell short on performance. There are other options that we would recommend that offer substantially more value.

Conclusion

Offering low cost, but low performance, this machine did not really live up to our expectations, and we would hesitate to recommend it. Instead, we would suggest looking at our Best Buy award winners — machines that cost less than this one and outperformed it, or at our Editors' Choice award winner, if you want the very best, but at a premium.