Great bread taste like bread, not your sliced foam /rubber tasting of fish meal stuff!

This bread machine is excellent. We've had ours for some 4 - 5 years (when they were £150!), and I can honestly say in that time we've only bought a dozen loaves from a shop, just because we'd forgotten to put the machine on. It has never gone wrong in what must be more than 500 loaves, and once you're into the routine, and can remember the ingredients, it takes only a few minutes to set it up each time. The bread is well textured and nicely crusted. You do get a bit of a flat hole in the bottom of the loaf where the paddle was, but that's no big deal, as it only affects the end of one slice of bread.

Highly recommended.

The Panasonic SD252 makes excellent bread, white or brown. It also makes good dough for pizza.
The size of the loaf is sometimes too tall as the base is too square and this makes the bread too big to fit into our toaster.

Before the Panasonic SD252 I had previously owned a Prima breadmaker, which made rock hard loaves with huge holes in the centre! Like the previous reviewer, a friend bought a new breadmaker (this exact model) and let me try it out. The same day I went on Amazon and ordered my new Panasonic SD252. It was extremely quick to set up and the instructions are clear and easy to follow. The recipe book includes over 70 recipes which range from simple to more adventurous so you're able to choose the most suitable. You're able to choose between three sizes of loaf and also how dark you want the crust! It's simply a case of pouring in the ingredients (measuring equipment provided), pressing the buttons - which are are clearly labelled - and then sit back and wait. There's a quick bake option (1 hour 55mins). If you haven't much time, or there's a 13 hour timer so you can set it to bake in time for your tea - or even your breakfast. Most breadmakers I've seen make bread that smells wonderful, but very few make really tasty, fresh bread that is just like a 'real' loaf.
There's more though. It's able to make gluten-free bread and cater for low-salt and high-fibre diets. It can make pizza dough and french bread. It has a sandwich bread option (which makes softer bread with a thinner crust) and it's also able to make rolls, buns and croissants. There's a bake-only option for making cakes and teabreads, and the breadmaker beeps when making fruit-loaves to let you know when to add extra ingredients (the more expensive version adds the extra ingredients for you).
I would urge anyone buying a breadmaker to seriously consider this one. The possibilities are endless: banana bread, rye bread, bread with sunflower seeds, herb bread, 100%, 70% or 50% wholemeal, Ciabatta, Foccacia, Chelsea buns and so on. I've not tried every recipe yet (I have made up some of my own though), but I can honestly say that everything I've made has been delicious. I'm not a very good cook, so it must be down to the breadmaker!

I have owned a Morphy Richards bread maker for some time but have never been happy with it. A friend of mine is well into bread making and he recommended the Panasonic, so I looked at Amazon and found two models, the SD252 and the SD253.I chose the 252 because I didn't want the automatic nut dispenser which the 253 has and it is over £20 cheaper.
Amazon were way cheaper than anyone on the net and their service is spot on.
I received the machine today, (Wed) plugged it in, read the instructions, put in the ingredients and stood back. I used the quick bake prog. (1.55mins) as I wanted to see the results.....
The 1st thing that struck me was how quiet it was, my previous machine banged and shook so much I had to lock it in the kitchen if I put it on timer overnight. This one just hums with a quiet swishing.
The quality of the 252 is superb, easy to read push buttons and measuring tools and most important, the bread!!!!! What can I say? Despite all attempts the Morphy Richards just made small bread flavoured house bricks, this one makes bread that defies belief in flavour, texture and size (I made the large size, God knows what the X large will be like)
The old machine left the paddle in the bread which meant digging it out and ruining the loaf. Not so the 252, out popped the loaf with hardly a blemish underneath with the paddle still on its spindle.
To finish either Panasonic models will give the same superb results, but I just couldn't justify the extra for the 253.
Don't even consider any other make and get it from Amazon.