I read most of the reviews on King Arthur's website, and I also read the reviews on Amazon, and was still in the "seesaw" stage of a decision when I received the Zo Virtuoso Plus as a gift! It wasn't even a birthday or Christmas, either! This breadmaker has a bit of a learning curve. First off, I shut off the hold function where it supposedly brings all the ingredients to temperature. That was annoying. I love the fact that it tells you what time it will be done rather than tell you how long it will take and let you figure the time of day. I am a bit annoyed that the recipes that came with it are for one large loaf only. I don't like the shape of 2 lb. loaves in the breadmaker. I find that the slices are too tall, and end up taking the dough out and baking the bread in a longer bread pan. But after having breadmakers for so long, I have plenty of recipes for 1 lb., 1 1/2 lb., and 2 lb. loaves. I have ALWAYS been hands-on with all of my breadmakers... pushing down the dough and scraping the sides, checking how wet or dry the dough is. And I started taking out the paddle in my first breadmaker, the Hitachi HB-101 vertical breadmaker. I find that the Zo mixes and kneads the dough better than any of the breadmakers I have had, most times making scraping the sides unnecessary. When making a smaller than 2 lb. loaf, the dough ends up lopsided or on one side of the bread pan, making it necessary to take the dough out and shape it if you want to bake it in the machine. Since I live in Southern California, I do use the Zo to bake the bread rather than heat up the house using the oven during the summer months. No breadmaker does everything. I am very pleased with the Zo and will use it in concert with the Cuisinart Convection breadmaker, Emile Henry Italian Loaf Baker, and all the different sizes of bread pans I have.

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