Due to the significant advantages of cost savings, low temperature rises and high efficiency, synchronous reluctance machines (SynRMs) have attracted growing interest from academia to industrial applications. Numerous articles have been published to obtain a SynRM with improved performance (i.e., a high torque density and efficiency and a lower torque ripple) using different focusing points at healthy and faulty conditions such as rotor design, magnetic steel grade, stator winding, and fault tolerance control (FTC) strategy. Hence, this article reviews the scientific researches about SynRMs aiming to improve their performance. These scientific researches can be categorized into four sections: 1) optimal rotor design; 2) magnetic steel grade; 3) winding configurations; and 4) FTC strategies.