I used the HTA study guide and found it to be generally useful and helpful. Whilst it's a guide and meant to be brief (i.e. not a textbook), I found that some pertinent sections lacked detail or lacked relevant detail. The personalities were rather brief but had some information which the others didn't have (I did Speer), the earlier dot points on Germany were a bit different to what I had seen in the other books (different as in the layout of the information), but the WW1 topic was pretty good. However, this is generally the same throughout all those mentioned books, so you need to collaborate resources and collect the necessary information for some extra notes or what ever you have planned.
I think the Excel book was by Ken Webb, so knowing Webb's works from History Extension, it sort of assured me it was the right info. Similar stuff to the Macquarie book, and I think since Webb worked with the HTA, there was information overlap.
So really, having all 3 at hand is rather convenient. There was information in one which wasn't in the other and there was information in the other which wasn't in the first or second one, and so on. This was also on top of having access to textbooks and an abundance of online resources such as films, journals etc. But being a historian means you need to access all these sources and vet out the important information for your notes and essays etc.
But if I had to choose one, I'd go with the HTA. Just make sure the topics you're doing are actually covered in the book you choose.
