we just bought a 9690 and traded in our 8780XP with lil over 1000 hours on it. granted we have only used it to cut 40 acres of wheat but so far we are all real pleased with it, seems to me that each massey combine is getting better and better and i hear more people talking about trying one and liking it. some advantages over the xp are they put a better hydrostat in it, it is real responsive now has more torque just like our old 8570 did what i was told was that the 8780's got the gleaner hydros in them and my opinion it is worthless u put it to full forewards and it takes time getting to full speed the 9690 u hit it and it goes now like that. the new rotor we were impressed with it in the wheat we have the reverse bars too with it, the straw quality is not as good with the full length cylinder bars and prolly the reverse bars hurt it as well the xp had nice straw quality but we don't bale much straw here at all like 5 acres so not no concern of ours. the front beater seems to feed in better. the cab is a lot quieter more spacious better air conditioner. we have the field star opition and i love it as well had an agleader 2000 in the old one. the one thing that we don't really like yet at least is the posts in the cab had all my off color friends bragging on the old one how much u could see without the posts, its hard to get used to it being there but everybody says it takes time right now i don't like it kinda right in the way on a 25ft head to the end of the head on one side. a friend of mine said his deere is the same way not sure on that i drove a demo 9660sts last year and it had a 30ft flex on it so i can't comment on that but i was told the 30ft head u can see the ends of the head fine! we have a mud hog on ours too took it off of the xp as well. we have the factory chaff spreaders and we really love it compared to the spreader its worth the money to us does a real nice job spreading chaff. we think the sieve does a better job of cleaning the grain as well they modified it as well and with a new cleaning fan. any more questions reply back or e-mail me thanks allen in my opinion a 9690 is worth it, sorry didn't reply back sooner have been busy cleaning out grain bins!