I picked Panorama after browsing through many self-study books in the big Maruzen store in Osaka, and I really like it. It focuses on grammar and introduces vocabulary by the way, so to broaden your vocabulary you should complement it with other learning tools. It has very good explanations of the grammar targeted at adults starting language learning from scratch.
Every concept and every word are introduced gradually. There are exercises inside the book. I like the meticulous cross-references between the grammar part, the practice part and the website. You can listen to every one of the example sentences online and there are further listening comprehension exercises.
I’m currently at 40% of the book and I’m very happy with it.
