An expensive and unusually poor Sony product.

Taking great photos in most situations, the DSC-W50 is a bargain at this price.

Sony’s high-end cameras have consistently impressed us at PC Authority, but just recently they’ve fallen short of Labs Winner status. The DSC-F717 changes all that, with its heady mix of image quality, features and design propelling it to the top of the pile.

The 5-megapixel DSC-V1 offers a great combination of features and performance in a relatively small body. While it’s smaller than its prime competitors – the Canon G5 and the Nikon 5400 – there are even smaller models in this month’s company.

Along with the Sony Cyber-shot P-93, the Canon Powershot A95 is the big lad of this roundup with a pretty decent 5-megapixel CCD. The rest vary from 3-4-megapixel. While this does give the Canon a bit of an edge over the competition in terms of resolution and functionality, it's the camera's other attributes that cemented this unit in the top three.

Featuring a compact lozenge-shaped body with a fair bit of weight to it, the Cyber-shot P-93 is a solid camera that implies strength and good engineering. Internally, the camera has a 5.1-megapixel CCD and is capable of taking some excellent photos.

Sony is no doubt a technological behemoth, an innovative market leader in everything electrical, and fun. For Sony, digital photography is no exception, the DSC-S70 being the 3.3 megapixel entrant in the highly successful Cyber-shot range.

In issue 119 of PC Authority, we took eighteen cameras and put their images under the microscope. Now you can too.

With huge LCDs, underwater capabilities and high resolutions for under $450, now is the time to buy.