Sony describes most of the digital cameras in its Cyber-shot W series as ‘compact and stylish' and on the whole it's hard to disagree with that summary when handling the DSC-W290. Although not in the super-slim category (it nevertheless measures a comfortable 98 x 57 x 23mm), it weighs just 174g, still slips easily into a bag or pocket and appears in the UK in rather macho black or blue.

Following the trend that believes big is better when it comes to resolution, the DSC-W290 boasts 12.1-megapixels and comes with a Carl Zeiss 28mm wide-angle lens. However, bearing in mind some of the impressive features in this camera, it only offers a disappointing 5x optical zoom; surely increasing that wouldn't have been too much to ask?

The 3-inch LCD, on the other hand, is very welcome and the controls are kept to an acceptable minimum. You'll notice on the top that alongside the power and shutter buttons there's an extra one with a smiley face on. That's because Sony has added a Smile Shutter feature that will automatically take a picture when your subject grins at you; there are even three levels from slight to broad! This works especially well with the Anti Blink function which will avoid all those annoying snaps where your friends and loved ones have their eyes closed.

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The other controls are the standard set of zoom, mode dial, 4-way control, playback, menu and delete. One design slip-up here is with the 4-way, where the left edge that organizes the Macro setting is so close to the LCD that they've had to cut an indentation into it, and even then it's awkward to operate.

This seems to be a bit of a common pattern with the DSC-W290. For example, the Scene modes contain some helpful and unusual choices such as Soft Snap, Twilight Portrait and Underwater, yet there's no Sport choice or anything that will handle fast moving objects.

Again, a major selling point for this camera is the ability to shoot 720p HD movies (and there's even an underwater setting for this) and yet you can't use the zoom in this mode and there's no HDMI output to show the results directly from the camera on an HD TV.

One good point is that you can record up to 29 minutes worth of HD movie footage but the downside is that Sony insists on using its own Memory Stick Pro Duo storage card rather than the more universally accepted SD card. When it comes to Face Detection, though, the DSC-W290 is ahead of the field since as well as recognizing up to 8 faces in the frame, it also contains an in-built Selected Face Memory facility which cleverly focuses on the specific person you want to highlight.

The mode dial includes an Easy setting which, as well as taking over most functions automatically, increases text and image size, while the Intelligent Scene Recognition option has an Advanced choice which will shoot two images in difficult lighting conditions and let you decide which is best. In addition, there's a wide range of image sizes available in 4:3, 3:2 and 16:9 aspect ratios depending on whether you want A3+ poster sizes or very low res photos to send via e-mails or upload to social networking sites.

On balance, the images produced are mostly sharp and faithfully reproduce both original colour and contrast, although there is an occasional tendency to softness around the edges. Both casual and semi-serious snappers will generally be delighted with the number of aids to embellish and enhance their pictures and as such this is an attractive camera for the price.

Sony have gone all out in the Cyber-shot DSC-W290 to make capturing photos both fun and creative with a number of innovative portrait technologies as well as introducing HD movie making. It's a shame this is marred by some design flaws, lack of a Sport mode and a restrictive zoom.