Brother PE770 Embroidery Machine with USB Memory-Stick Compatibility
Mr. Ali – Our Tailor In Calcutta
I saw a lot of gorgeous embroidery when my friend and I were in India last year. She really got into it, and we spent more time at the tailor’s and fabric shops than we did sightseeing. Embroidery is hot in India. Even the young, modern girls who don’t often wear their traditional dress, have embroidery on their jeans and tee-shirts.
All this elegant embellishment reawakened my childhood love and when I got back home, I started researching embroidery machines. I always do a lot of research before spending so much money, and I hope it helps you too.
My First Choice
I did make the 40-minute trek to my local dealer. But he only had large machines costing thousands of dollars — way out of my price range. So I started looking online.
The Brother PE770 was my first choice: a lot of value for the money at under $600; a step up from the “standard” 4×4 inch hoop to a 5×7 inch embroidery area; USB stick compatible for easy importing designs without having to hook up to my laptop, and all the easy-to-use features I’m used to from my Mother’s Brother sewing machine.
These are the most important features in my opinion that differentiate the Brother PE770 from the SE400. The easy-to-use features such as the automatic needle threader (which I absolutely love because my eyes aren’t what they used to be), quick-set bobbin, and auto thread trimmer are the same on both machines. The PE770 does have many more built-in designs, but I almost always want other designs that I download, so that doesn’t matter to me.
Built-In USB Flash Drive Port
Download Additional Embroidery Designs
From A USB Flash Drive
Compatible with Brother Memory
Cards And USB Flash Drives
One of the most important things to consider when you’re looking at buying an embroidery machine is how do you download embroidery designs. No matter how many built-in embroidery patterns a machine has, sooner or later you’re going to want more. Maybe the style of the built-in designs isn’t to your taste. Or maybe you just need something particular for a special project. You’re going to want to stitch a different design easily and without a lot of additional expense.
In addition to the memory cards, the Brother PE 770 has a USB port that accepts a USB flash drive. Flash drives go by various names including thumb drives, memory stick, USB keys, and they are cheap and readily available. The PE770 can read up to 200 embroidery designs that you’ve previously saved to the thumb drive. You can copy designs from CD, or find a vast variety of free and reasonably-prices designs on the Internet. You can then stitch them out simply by plugging in your USB flash drive and picking the one you want to embroider. Or store up to 12 patterns in the machine’s memory to use anytime.
In my opinion, the USB flash drive is the best method for transferring embroidery designs because you don’t need additional software and you don’t have to move your computer next to the embroidery machine. Just download embroidery designs from the Internet, save them on a flash drive, and import them into your Brother PE770 later.
5 x 7 Inch Embroidery Field
5 x 7 Inch Embroidery Area
The Brother PE770 has a larger 5×7 inch embroidery field. Although many projects are available for the 4×4 inch frame size, many of the best designs are larger. With the PE770, you can take advantage of all these. And often you’ll want a larger sized monograms on a towel, for example, or the back of a jacket or t-shirt. It may not sound like a big different, but compare the sizes side-by-side and you’ll see a big difference in what you can do.
Embroidery-Only Machine
The Brother PE770 is a dedicated embroidery machine. It doesn’t do sewing. You can leave it set up for embroidery and not have to switch between sewing and embroidery. You can also work on the sewing parts of the project or a different project while the PE770 happily embroiders along. You don’t have to wait for it to finish embroidering just because you need to hem a pair of pants. The Brother PE770 is a precision embroidery machine. It does one thing and does it very well. This also means that there are no compromises trying to fit sewing features in.
Value For Money
In short, if you want an intermediate embroidery machine that is affordable and gives you a lot of features and value for the price, check out the Brother PE770.
The USB flash drive I’m trying to use is a Gigastone 16gb. I have used multiple different brands before, but my embroidery machine is not reading it. Are there certain brands that work better in the usb drives? Please detail.
hi I’m feeling hopeless,i try to work design from my usb stick,but my machine didn’t read stick…..please what did I do wrong….brother innivis pe2600
I have a PE770,I go thru all the steps put my file on usb and my machine won’t read it .Any suggestions as to what I’m doing wrong?
I’m grfutael you made the post. It’s cleared the air for me.
Just received my brother pe yesterday…built in designs stitch like a dream,,, however my usb is not reading..reformatted them and still not reading…I am about to loose it..I have a singer xl 400 and a quintet love them both..but ventured out of my comfort zone…please help
thanks
Karen
I’ m about to lose it!!!! I have bought a new computer I am a newbie at embroidering. Let me tell you what I can do. I can purchase my appliques etc… I save it as a pes file… I can open it up in SewWhat pro…I can put a name in the applique but when it comes to saving it I don’t think I’m doing it correctly obviously. I have tried to save under the brother/ Baby lock professional pes I have tried to save it under all files and I can get it onto the USB but my machine will not recognize it. Could you please please help me. My machine is the brother 770D.
Thank you in advance
can you tell me what type of usb stick will i need brand or will any usb work i see some really cheap and would love to have a bunch to put my design in order so i don’t have to hunt them when i get ready for them . the brother stick is 29.00 i don’t want to give that much as i want quite a few. so please let me know if you have a place that is really cheap and they work. i have found them for a couple of bucks. thank you
Hi Pat, I don’t know for sure because I don’t have a PE770 (wish I did. ;-) ). I would guess that cheaper sticks work. But be sure you have the designs backed up on your computer because any stick or hard drive can fail and lose your files. My general rule is not to buy the cheapest or most expensive but somewhere in the middle. You could also look on Amazon.com and read the reviews for general reliably.
Where do you buy memory cards?
I have a PE770. I started my first project and the needle broke. I turned the machine off to replace the needle. When I turned it back on I had lost where I was in the project. Is there any way to go back to where you left off.
Hi Kathryn, I don’t have a PE770, so I can’t tell you exactly. But the PE770 must have the same functions as the SE400 of moving back and forth by stitch or by color. Try to find it in the manual. In the SE400 manual, it’s under “Stopping while embroidering.”
Hi I read your review on the PE 770. I was thinking of getting one. Do I need to purchase software with this machine?
Hi Derlyn, You won’t need software to use the built-in designs or to import designs from a USB stick into the machine. But you will need embroidery editing software if you want to make monograms or merge designs such as letters. You’ll need digitizing software to create your own designs. There are a lot of choices depending on your needs.
I recently purchased a PE 770 and am trying to embroidery a name(two words)
I can not figure how to space between the words. Please help.
Hi Barbara, if it’s like the SE400, you use the underscore character ( _ ) to put the space between the words.