EDITED: Loved it, Hated it, Love it again – I had to learn that it can only do what it's programmed to do AND ALSO that for some reason making a MEDIUM LOAF does not have enough ingredients (mostly) to give it a really good thrashing/mixing and turn out a good loaf. I now use LARGE loaf mix (more ingredients) and am getting a good loaf each time. I also invested in a new gram by gram scales which makes the weighing easier. I haven't bought a loaf of bread since I got this machine, and no longer need to have spare bread in the freezer (just in case) which has considerably freed up freezer space. I now cannot imagine NOT having this bread machine in the house, and the unit has almost half paid for itself already.

PROS: - Because of the long bake times (using a lot of rest time) toss everything in and set the timer to finish baking at a convenient time for you. Walk away and forget until that set time and tip out a fresh baked loaf of bread. - Easy as intro to basic bread making - Uses less power than starting the oven - Finished bread tips out of pan really easily - Just soak then rinse non-stick bread pan and paddle, and air dry or dry with a soft cloth. - Reasonable variety of different breads to choose from and bake (experiment and find your favs) - You can make your own multigrain mix (find seeds and nuts and blitz in food processor) which works just as well, as long as you also use the cornmeal and oatmeal components. (or it can be a little dry) - STALE BREAD!!!!!! On top of your normal loaves, make a loaf of plain white basic bread (with no conditioners to keep it fresh) and put it aside to go stale over a couple of days. Proper stale bread. Now you can make all those recipes from your granma's cook book that are impossible without proper stale bread. Queen's pudding, bread and butter pudding, spicy bread pudding (much like spicy fruit loaf) and whip up your own dry bread crumbs (stale bread + food processor + drying tray) for INCREDIBLE fried chicken or crumbed chops! etc etc They are so much better than bread crumbs from the shop.

CONS: - When making spicy fruit loaf using organic sultanas and currants (with sugary crystals on them), the bottom of the dispenser opens but the fruit stays in there until you poke it. Luckily there is a REALLY LOUD CLACK when the dispenser releases, so you can go and check it or toss them in manually at that point. As a work around I'm going to trial tossing the sultanas in flour before putting in the dispenser and see if that works. - Both Spicy Fruit Loaf recipes (wholemeal and long cycle + white and short cycle) are marked as NEW ZEALAND recipes in the book. There is no AU recipe. However, both recipes will work with AU ingredients as well (found after much frustration) - Banana bread recipe recipe using BANANA CHIPS (finely chopped) instead of fresh bananas. DON'T DO IT. Banana chips are hard, very very hard, harder than nuts hard, and even if you chop them finely, the amount of bashing around and vigorous mixing a loaf of bread gets means those hard little lumps that DO NOT SOFTEN with moisture, will score and scratch the surface of your non-stick bread pan. Mine has very prominent scores in circles on the bottom after I made it, and I followed all the instructions, but I doubt I could prove it's the recipe that caused the damage and make a claim. SO DO NOT USE THAT RECIPE with banana chips. Find one online that uses over ripe real bananas. They won't scratch your non-stick pan. - Using MEDIUM loaf ingredients sometimes is not enough ingredients to turn out the best loaf. Go to LARGE loaf and it will work every time. - The back of the unit gets very hot and needs clearance around it and good ventilation. - The "wait" times will drive you batty and make you frustrated until you get used to it, but then you don't notice it any more.