Microsoft was proud to announce their LifeCam HD last week, the first webcam to support 720p. But its reign (while pleasant) didn’t last for long: Hercules has released the Dualpix HD720p, which they are claiming is the first webcam to support 720p. Guys, in order to be first, you have to come out with the product before anyone else. Still, it’s only a week later and it looks perfectly decent, although I’m skeptical that they can really achieve decent image quality with such a tiny setup.

Hercules also says their one-megapixel sensor will take five-megapixel photos. I sense a fundamental lack of sense in that claim. Putting “interpolative mode” in parentheses doesn’t make 1 into 5.

But aside from that rather ridiculous claim, the webcam looks nice. It’s designed for laptops and has a super-wide-angle lens, so people can look at your entire body while you look at their face. At $60 it’s also a bit cheaper than the LifeCam HD, but it’s hard to say which is the better device until we test them. So test them we shall!

I’ll get a review up once I’ve had a chance to compare the two.