Gadgetory

hi I'm Jana tofudan for cnet.com and in front of me is the irobot roomba 790 this is the latest model of robot vacuums from iRobot one of the first things you'll notice when you take this robot vacuum out of the box is that it's a very aesthetically pleasing piece of machinery it's got really smooth edges and it's shiny and this bright blue colors it's very nice-looking not that its appearance matters in terms of performance but if you're gonna watch it track back and forth across your room a thousand times you definitely want something that's nice to look at the Roomba features a rotating brush wheel and then a creeping wheel that kind of pushes debris in towards the suction area it also features two heavy-duty wheels with rubber grips on the bottom that make it easy for the room but to navigate over rugs and onto different flooring surfaces the Roomba is fully programmable either through the touchscreen on the device itself or through this fully digital remote you can program the Roomba to turn on at different times of the day seven days a week ahead of time and it will leave its docking station automatically at the time you've set it and return back when it's cleaned your room the roomba 790 also features a spot clean mode where it will circle in a spiral fashion around the spot which you would like for it to clean effectively picking up all of the debris the roomba 790 is a really meticulous machine so if you're looking for something that will clean your room in a really short amount of time this is probably not the machine for you when we set the robot vacuums loose in our living room set here with rice scattered all over to see what they would pick up and what they wouldn't the Roomba picked up considerably more than any of the other robot vacuums however it also took twice as long so while the Roomba may not be efficient it's definitely effective as a robot vacuum while it wasn't the top performer in our pet hair tests it was a close second so if you have pets and want something that can move around daily at a scheduled time and kind of do that routine maintenance for the pet hair that sheds and falls this is definitely a good option for you the Roomba features a large dustbin that is easy to remove empty and reinstall once this is done this is an excellent feature because it means that you will have to empty the dustbin far less often than with certain other models the remote won't replace a traditional stand-up vacuum however it does do an excellent job of keeping your floors clean and helping with that day-to-day maintenance at $699 this is definitely not a casual purchase but if you like the idea of a robot vacuum this is one that we would definitely recommend because of its high performance in both our debris and our agility tests with the irobot roomba 790 I'm Katy Pilkington for cnet.com