It is not every day that you come across a 5-megapixel Web camera that is this cheap. But it is all marketing hype: this gadget's true resolution is a mere 1.3 megapixels (without digital magnification to the so-called higher quality).

Sales spiel aside, the Prolink webcam did perform decently enough. The picture, though pixelated, is good enough for everyday use and once you can get it to work with the PC, it supports all the major communication tools such as MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and Skype. To try out the night vision technology embedded with the webcam, I did a test with my laptop in near darkness in an unlit corner of my living room. The first things that caught my attention, by blinding me momentarily, were the two bright LED lights that were automatically switched on via a sensor. The camera worked well even when I plunged my surroundings into darkness by covering the LED lamps. In fact, the camera was sensitive enough to show my face in near darkness. Of course, the LCD screen ambient light helped, too.

But there was a problem with the LED lamps - if my face was backlit, with the light source behind my back, the lamps would not switch on once the camera sensed ambient light. So I used Blu Tack adhesive to cover the sensor hole to simulate darkness, forcing the lamps to switch on. It would have been better if I could have controlled the lights and its brightness via the control panel.

The other thing I should applaud is the fuss-free webcam base that sits snugly on top of the laptop LCD screen. A built-in microphone also means there's no need for one more gadget on my desk. The wide lens also provided a good image capture.

The one thing that irked me was the installation process. Frustration reigned as my Windows XP operating system on my desktop PC seemed to lose some registry entries - information that tells the computer what type of PC peripheral is being used and how it is controlled - and that hinders the installation process.

Even using the latest driver or utilising the webcam installation wizard on my desktop did not help as the installation disk did not have the information file (.INF) for the wizard to use. So there was no way for me to fix the webcam. Strangely, the gadget worked on my laptop.

FINAL SAY: A cheap webcam armed with two super-bright LED lights for near-darkness teleconferencing.

PROLiNK PCC5020
$48
Get it from authorised dealers