For me buttonholes always involve a bit of test sewing and adjusting, but I can confirm the old buttonholer attachments have worked fine when the one-step auto buttonholer has acted up. I don't mind a 4 step too much, as long as it's pretty forward and I get the hang of it. The problem is usually when there's folds, ends, seams, or something like that, two or three layers of fabric in places. Wool and coat fabric can be a challenge for some machines. The advantage with the mechanical buttonholer attachments is they grip the fabric differently, holds it in place and handles it rather firmly. Built in buttonholer functions use the swing arm zigzag that can be adjusted for a perfect satin stitch, but for some reason it's not always easy to adjust for a buttonhole. Some machines depend onthese long large buttonholer feet, others have the function completely controlled by the software in the machine.