Hey guys!
I want to share with you the Motorola Edge 50 Neo review as I think it’s one of the best in the mid-range and could be a daily driver for many people :)
Motorola is one of the companies that relies on quality and affordable prices, as you will notice in this review.
The Edge 50 Neo is a smartphone competitor in the mid-price range. It offers nice build quality, a good camera, and a reasonable price.
Be the color in the monochromatic world!
Motorola decided to party once again with Pantone to make 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 comfortable with using.
The lack of a 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
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 × 1220. One of the highlights 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 one 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 an 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 in performance which means that the chip and the whole phone “keep 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 for 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 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 is 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 are cockroaches. The phone runs smoothly with every task and the added applications from Motorola are a key assistant to better knowing your phone. Gestures 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) overwhelming!
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 whose charger cannot be used with the Edge 50 Neo, mainly because of different standards of speeds. In my use case I have no problems because I am using a 120W Motorola charger and I enjoy the phone at its 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, a 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!
