Labs

The Xtra is designed for notebooks, with its sprung clip holding it firmly in place on top of a thin LCD screen. The short USB cable makes it unsuitable for desktops, but the soft carry case and tiny dimensions mean it will fit easily into a laptop bag. Also, there's a convenient capture button for stills.

As we'd expect at this price, image quality was commendable, and refresh rates were fine, even at higher resolutions.

The bundled software includes decent video and photo editing in the form of ArcSoft's duo. There's also a rather posh Web site creation tool in DreamWeaver 2 - it's not the latest version of Macromedia's sophisticated Web site designer, but a few years ago it would have set you back hundreds of pounds.

This is a high-quality webcam, but the price is pretty steep. Still, its design makes a lot of sense for notebook users.