Motorola Edge 50 Neo REVIEW – The good, the bad, the beautiful

Motorola is one of the companies that rely on quality and affordable prices, as you are going to notice in this review.

The Edge 50 Neo is one of the smartphone competitors in the mid-price range, as it offers nice build quality, good camera and it comes at a reasonable price.

Be the color in the monochromatic world!

Motorola decided to party once again with Pantone for making the color of their new mid-class phones. The result is coming in 4 different options, depending on your taste. My unit came in the color Poinciana which is a blend of burnt orange and red and it screams character.

The back is made of vegan leather, with a nice and smooth finish. It really feels different in the hand, compared to the other phones that we see. The frames are plastic and maybe this is one of the tradeoffs when you get a phone in the mid-price range.

At the bottom we see the USB Type-C port, one of the two stereo speakers, and the sim tray. Classically, on the right side you’d find the volume rockers and the power button which for my usage are positioned a bit higher than what I’m comfy with using.
The lack of side-positioned fingerprint reader means one thing – It’s under the screen, and it works flawlessly.

Not only beautiful, but with a thought towards the eco-friendly world, as the box doesn’t include any plastic in it, and it smells of a perfume. Included in the box is the hardcase that is made out of recycled plants, so that’s one more eco step.

Screen as it should be!

Motorola decided to use a rather great-looking screen here. The 6.4″ pOLED screen features a 120Hz refresh rate for “them gamerz” but the LTPO tech will make sure you don’t use 120 Hz on a 10Hz refresh, so the battery will last longer. From the color count we notice that here we see a 10-bit panel, so that’s a good thing – more colors, better picture. The resolution is also decent as it’s 2670 x 1220. One of the highlights really comes from the light itself and more precisely – the max brightness. It comes at 3000 nits PEAK, which means you won’t be having any issues with seeing the screen even on the beach.

For social media content, YouTube videos or streaming platforms I can say that for now that’s one of the best screens in a mid-ranger. The only part that I don’t like here are the speakers that are “just ok” – nothing special, low bass, lack of richness. Loud but that’s it.

Stoic workforce

The Edge 50 Neo is not only beautiful. It’s hiding the full potential below that pretty Poinciana color as it features the 4nm Mediatek Dimensity 7300 SoC. It features 4x Arm Cortex-A78 up to 2.5GHz cores and 4x Arm Cortex-A55 cores – 8 in total.

This chip is a very capable on in the mid-class and I see that Motorola didn’t even get the maximum from it, as it supports LPDDR5 memory, but here we have the 12GB LPDDR4X. Another give-or-take moment comes with the included storage, which is 256GB but UFS 2.2. Surely, 90% of the users won’t be able to tell the difference, but I wanted to see UFS 4.0.

The gaming performance is as expected from such a SoC – good and stable framerate in games like Call of Duty and Genshin impact, although you have to play on mid settings, otherwise the framerate would drop. The absence of lag, stutter and any other irritating “extras” is what I expect from a decent phone but the main ACE in the sleeve here comes from the incredibly adequately made cooling system. Even in throttle test, we don’t see huge drops of performance which means that the chip and the whole phone “keeps it cool”. 10 points for Gryffindor, for sure!

Colorful phone, colorful camera

Compared to the Edge 40 Neo, the 50 Neo comes with a refined camera system – 3 sensors in the main section and one selfie camera. For the main sensor, the guys from Motorola put a very nice Sony Lytia 700C which produces amazing images, without the need for editing in order to post on social media. I can say that for now I love it!

The 13MP ultrawide is not one of my favorite sensors but still does the job well, except of night photography. The 10MP telephoto sensor gives you the option to use the x3 optical zoom for good-looking images but don’t crop – 10MP is not sufficient for such gymnastics.

The video capabilities are good as every single sensor can film with up to 4K 30/60 fps. The only limitation could possibly be the nighttime as the video lacks detail during the dark hours.

The Android is in the house… ha…

Coming out of the box, the Moto Edge 50 Neo runs Android 14 – the newest version for now. I am very excited to see that Motorola are catching up with the other as they put the newest version in the phones. My only concern comes with the security updates that are well known to be delayed for previous models.

Everything else regarding the software just feels right. The integration of the shell is good, bugs are not present, nor cockroaches. The phone runs smoothly every task and the added applications from Motorola are key assistant to better knowing your phone. Guestures as shaking for activating the flashlight are well accepted in my day-to-day use.

Nothing feels wrong here except the fact that the phone comes with some pre-installed games, but that’s all.

Power (not)overwealming!

Unfortunately the battery is a bit smaller than what we had with the Edge 40 Neo. The capacity of the 50 Neo comes at 4310 mAh which will last you around one full day, depending on what you are doing. If you are gaming more, then expect a faster drain.

The light in the tunnel is the fact that the phone supports fast charging – 68W wired and 15W wirelessly, but… There’s another but – if you are in the European region, you won’t be receiving a charger in the box and you’ll have to find a way to charge it with the 68W max. This is something that bothers me a bit, because some people may upgrade from a very old phone which charger cannot be used with the Edge 50 Neo, mainly because of different standard of speeds. In my use case I have no problems, because I am using a 120W Motorola charger and I enjoy the phone at it’s full potential, not thinking of when the battery will be drained.

Well, everything comes to an end…

My conclusion is that the Motorola Edge 50 Neo is a very capable and appealing smartphone in the middle price range. It features a nice processor, a great screen for them TikTok vids, camera that will serve you well (if you are not an Instagram star) and last but not least – the color and design. I love when companies use their brains and just “make things nice”. The collaboration with Pantone gives you an amazing set of colors to choose from and the fact that the hard case is color-matched deserves 10 more points for Gryffindor.

Overall, I can say that this is one of the best phones in the mid-range mainly because it’s different from the mass!