I'm looking at buying a breadmaker as I make a lot of my own bread by hand, but I don't have an awful lot of time to do it at the moment, so I'm finally giving in and going to get one.

Any recommendations for which ones are good?

I have had a couple, and have my mums now and I bought one for MIL last xmas

They are all basically the same, but features I found better were the fold down paddle (the ones that don't are mighty annoying as you have to dig it out of the loaf!), different size loaves, timer (so can set to cook over night and be ready in morning mmmmmmm), dough maker - really good for doing buns etc, and also one that beeps when its time to put the seeds in bread

Other than most of them have standard stuff like different bread types, colour
One thing I wouldn't say you need (even though it sounds good) is the speed loaf - they are horrible...much better to do full setting!

when you make your bread I would ignore the salt and sugar it states - if it comes with a spoon thing use a big end of sugar and a small end of salt - they say some hideous amount and the bread tastes awful!

I'm looking at buying one too to replace the one my ex nicked 5 years ago my old one did everything including just making the dough and proving it so I could make pizza bases, buns etc it had a flap on top so you could add seeds or dried fruit etc I think it was a Murphy Richards one. Argos have a good range (and they'e got reviews so you can judge by what others think wheter it is a good buy or not but I'm just comparing at the mo. If I see one I like in Curry's for example I'm going to write down its details then Kelko (price compare) it to see if I can get it cheaper anywhere else

thanks Lisa, that's really helpful

thanks Dilly, will have a look on argos

When we were buying one for my Mum we looked at the reviews on Amazon. The one my sister had picked out looked stylish but the reviews were basically "very nice, until it stops working, which isn't long". So we picked something less fancy looking which had excellent reviews. (Unfortunately I can't remember what either of them was...)