Thanks for the reply Sokitnop.
In the end I went for the HMP Gastro, and have been pretty happy with it (I haven't played with a TM31 mind you). I would perhaps have gone for the Thermomix had it had a finer grained set of temperature controls. As it stands the HMP can do 'degree by degree' and go up to 190 c, both of which swayed me. The Gastro is much smaller than the freezing version you mention (the 'creative') and supposedly a bit smaller than the Thermomix. It should be noted that 'degree by degree' can over/under shoot by a few degrees, depending on what is in the bowl, but I'm guessing this is still much finer grained than the TM31.
FWIW Anyone buying the HMP needs to know that the inbuilt recipes are currently painfully slow to scroll through, so I never use them. I find them on the HMP website and perform them manually. For example, some sections have many recipes in them and as far as I can tell there is no way to jump to number 60 directly - The user must press the +/- buttons until the correct recipe is found. Very tedious. Of course, the user could easily remove any recipes that they don't want, or move recipes they do use to their own folder and so this issue can be mitigated. Still, the issue is compounded by the fact that the recipe name scrolls into view from the right. So you don't know what recipe you are on until a good few seconds after you have reached it. This could easily be fixed by a firmware update.
On the whole I'm happy with the purchase. Just wish it was closer to the TM31 in price (The 'Easy' is, but doesn't go to 190 c, only 130 c)
