One of a pair of near identical twins (the other being the DSC-W230), the DSC-W290 sat near the top of the new ('09) generation of conventionally-styled 'W' series compacts and features Sony's latest intelligent auto features, a useful stabilized 28-140mm (5x) zoom, 3.0" LCD and 12MP sensor that's also capable of capturing 720p HD movie clips in MPEG4 format. The slightly more run of the mill - and cheaper - DSC-W230 drops the zoom range and HD movie capture.