I use the Metz 48, which is a previous model. It works very well with my 400D. I have never tried any Canon flash on my DSLR, but i found that the Metz was very user-friendly, and consistently gives me nice pictures, except when I forget to reset the settings. It is easy to play around with over/under exposure and the ETTL works nice. In fact, it has inspired me to play around with flash more than I had thought. For me, it was well worth the money, and I also saved about 70-90 euros.

I do not know how compatible it is with accesories such as radio-transmitters or slaves, but I bought an extension cable for macro, and that works nice.

Lars