Sony springs a couple new Cyber-shot W models for Spring

The W290 comes in a rather subdued palette of colors

(Credit: Sony Electronics)

Joining the lower-middle middle-class W220 that Sony announced at CES are the $199 middle middle-class W230 and $249 upper-middle middle-class W290. (Sorry folks, but I'm running out of ways to describe mid-priced cameras.) While the W230 only differs from the W220 by $10 and LCD size--it's 3 inches vs. 2.7--the W290 has the same resolution and LCD as the W230 but with a significantly more flexible lens and better movie capture capabilities.

Photos: Sony Cyber-shot W models for Spring

In fact, based on the specifications the W290 sounds like a better deal than the W300. It's about $80 less (including Sony recent price drop on the W300 by $20). And though it's only 12 megapixels compared to the W300's 13.6, that's a pretty trivial difference compared to the nontrivial advantage the W290's 3-inch LCD, wide-angle 5X 28-140mm-equivalent lens and 30fps 720p MPEG-4 movie capture offer over the W300's 2.7-incher, narrow angle 3X zoom lens and VGA video. The W290 also includes Sony's latest automatic scene and face detection technologies, and doesn't include the hideously annoying and confusing Home menu anymore. If it's not abysmally slow and doesn't produce terrible photos, I think the W290 might be a mainstream contender for 2009. We'll get one, get going and get back to you when it's available later this Spring.