iRobot Roomba 780 robotic vacuum cleaner

The Neato XV-15, which we reviewed recently, presents a serious challenge to what has hitherto been almost a monopoly for iRobot's Roomba series of robotic vacuum cleaners.

The Roomba 780 is the company's response to that challenge. It looks very similar to previous models – a circular object around 14in wide that stands about 3in (7cm) tall. It uses a small base station into which it ‘docks' after each clean.

Its controls have been redesigned, with touch-sensitive buttons on the top panel and a display that seems to appear out of nowhere, with bright blue letters and numbers. It wasn't as advanced as the Neato's controls, however, and we found the touch-buttons a little unresponsive in comparison.

iRobot has rebranded and reworked its exiting navigation system, calling it iAdapt, but it's less clever than the Neato's. The path it took around rooms looked rather haphazard, and it bumped into objects more often than the Neato did, though it didn't cause any damage.

It also seemed to get lost regularly. Where the Neato was able to cover the whole floor of the home in which we tested it, and then return to base on its own, the Roomba 780 wasn't. It comes with two ‘light towers' which are small (10cm tall and 9cm wide) plastic units that each take two C-type batteries. They are set in doorways and either prevent the Roomba entering a room or guide it into that room so it can find its way out again (a switch on each tower selects its mode). These worked well, but the Roomba still got lost in some rooms. Even in a small room, with the door shut, it took three times as long as the Roomba to clean, partly because, apparently stuck, it kept going over the same area again and again.

One feature it has that the Neato models don't have is spot cleaning – pick it up and put it anywhere, then turn it on and hit the Spot Clean panel and it will clean in concentric circles around the spot where it was dropped, then return there. It's useful for quick cleans of areas it wouldn't normally reach.

We found it slightly less loud that the Neato (so quieter than a full vacuum cleaner) but it was still rather noisy. You'll be best off setting it to clean on a schedule – it can be set to clean once a day, every day, at different times if that's required. It is set up using the touch-panels on the top of the main unit or the supplied remote control.

The supplied kit is quite complex – it came with lots of replacement parts and cleaning products. The parts that need regular maintenance inside the Roomba 780 are cleverly coloured for clarity, which is handy.

The actual cleaning was pretty good – it picked up lots of dirt even when the floors appeared clean - but overall we found we preferred the Neato.