And why? because we've have been told bigger is better, well try telling that to Larry the limpet crab who took a fond fancy to a submarine as his new mate!

But like the massing armies of the Soviets and US, Sony have stepped up to the plate and offered us a 7.2 mega pixel camera the DSC-P150, yep that's right 7 mega pixels, that's enough resolution to enlarge an image to an unnatural size or to perfectly zoom into the smallest detail of pictures of your neighbours engaged in nocturnal activities (not that we'd suggest that is legal or a good idea)..

But the Sony DSC-P150 is more than just a mega pixel monster, in fact monster is a pretty poor choice of words as it is one of the best designed digital cameras we've had our paws on, its one of those gadgets you know is designed for its purpose merely from its feel in the palm of your hand.

The new unit is basically a DSC-P100 with the new 7.2 mega pixel chip inside and that's a good move as the P100 won a few awards and made many friends and now the latest unit can capture images at 3072 x 2304 pixels which means a 300dpi print on 8" x 10" paper. With a 3 x optical Carl Zeiss Vario Tessar lens and all the point and shoot features you'd expect from a Sony P series camera the P150 makes for a quick and effective domestic camera even when this one approached professional resolutions.

But there is a catch, the main change is the 7.2 mega pixel sensor which is the same physical size as the one in the P100 but with more pixels occupying the same area, so while you'll get a much sharper image the camera will be more susceptible to camera shake as only a slight movement will register a change in more of  the tightly packed sensors pixels. Perhaps a bigger sensor would have made more sense along with the jump in resolution but then that may have driven the need for a new body shell and lens when the plan was to merely give the old P100 some go faster stripes.

A digital camera with a poor battery is worthless and Sony have long since learned that lesson, the DSC-P150 will be good for approx 300 shots form a single charge of its lithium polymer batteries this includes a fair use of the 1.8" LCD backlit screen. Sadly once again Sony only package the P150 with a 32mb memory stick which is a bit cheap considering the size of image that the unit can create when set to the highest settings, so an instant upgrade to at least a 256mb stick is required.

While on the subject of upgrades you could also invest in a "cybershot station" which seems to be a glorified name for a dock which can both charge the unit and connect it to a PC or pict bridge printer for offloading images.

There are the now standard extras like the ability to record 640 x 480 mpeg movies at 30 frames per second (something the Canon Ixus 500 can't match) and the rapid fire which allows for 9 images to be taken in quick succession at full resolution.

Priced at £299 the Sony DSC-P150 seems good value compared to the P100 and indeed the competition, more manufacturers will follow suite shortly including the forthcoming range from Fuji so the mega pixel race will continue until we have enough combined resolution to image the world 3 times over.

We're not convinced of the need for 7 mega pixels unless you really want to get grandpas nasal hair in prefect focus but should feel the need to impress the neighbours then this is without doubt the smallest 7.2 mega pixel camera available and its got a nice slice of Sony style to go with it so fill your boots.

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