So i used to backup our iphones over wifi to icloud but if you dont connect them to wifi regular enough, after about 2-3months i find it takes forever and a day! so ive gone back to the old way of connecting them to the pc/itunes.

My question is, with icloud it saved absolutely everything, from texts, contacts, pics, videos right down to the screen layout/brightness etc(if you should restore the device) which is brilliant, but i cant remember if the itunes backup backs up the same data? i know it saves apps as i saw it, but it seemed to finish pretty quickly(within 10mins), so im just wondering does it save pics/vids aswell like it did with icloud?

Simple answer, yes!
When you connect an iPhone or iPad to iTunes it does 2 things...

1. It backs EVERYTHING up. (settings, WiFi networks, text messages, app data (notes for example), email (if you are using pop 3), photos etc. etc.)

2. It syncs (and so backs up) the purchased stuff. So music, apps and books etc.
These don;t really matter of course as you can always download them again, but crucially the app contents (data in an accounts app for example) get's backed up in stage 1.

The backup created in stage one can't be directly accessed. It is stored in an encrypted form somewhere in the appdata folder (on Windows).
But, when you connect a new device (or select to restore), these backups can then be restored to the new device.

iTunes (however much of a pig it is) is still the best and quickest way to backup your i device.
Hope this helps.

Following on from this, those backups are stored in the following locations.
This is useful if you want to backup your backups (as it were) to for example, an external drive.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4641633?tstart=0

Here are my backup folders, for iPhone 4s/5, iPad and iPhone 6.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/d56e3umt5f...ckups.JPG?dl=0

Brilliant thanks.

I can't believe how much quicker it is, I mean it was quoting 2-3 hours to back up just my 5S over icloud/wifi, where as on iTunes i backed up both mine and my mrs iPhones in about 20mins, and my mrs phone has twice the amount of apps/data than mine! I know which way I'll be sticking to in future!