Motorola announced their Edge 50 series phones in September, and we’ve checked out the edge 50 Pro, edge 50 and edge 50 fusion, now it’s time to check out the last in the series, the edge 50 neo.
Offering a phone with a smaller design to its larger siblings, the edge 50 neo promises no compromises packing a pOLED display, 50MP camera system with moto ai enhancements and a stylish design available in a range of colours.
The colour choice is varied thanks to Motorola’s ongoing partnership with colour matching and design company Pantone. The phone comes in three colours curated by Pantone Poinciana, Lattè, and Grisaille, with the phones getting a vegan leather finish on the rear.
Priced at $699, the motorola edge 50 neo sits just above the edge 50 fusion at $599 and below the $799 RRP of the edge 50.
I’ve been using the edge 50 neo alongside the edge 50 for a few weeks, and here’s how it went.
The edge 50 neo is quite a thick phone thanks to the flat 6.4” pOLED display on the front.
Where the edge 50 and edge 50 pro get the curved endless edge display, the edge 50 neo cuts a small cost corner and opts for a flat display – an option I personally find a lot easier to manage than a curved display, despite the definite improvement a curved screen makes to the look and feel.
Despite the thickness, the phone is fairly light in the hand, thanks to the plastic frame which is great for durability. The edge 50 neo also includes IP68 dust and water resistance, as well as MIL-STD 810H certification – it also has Corning Gorilla 3 on the display.
The style of the rear matches the rest of the edge 50 series, with the camera island ensconced in a gently curved island that you only notice when it rocks if you put the phone flat on a desk.
I checked out the Pantone Poinciana – bright red – coloured edge 50 neo and it’s a shockingly bright colour that stands out when you put it down on a desk or table – it certainly makes it hard to lose. The other colour choices – Lattè, and Grisaill, seem a little more staid, so as always it comes down to personal preference.
No matter which colour you choose, there’s a matching case, or more accurately a shell in that same colour included in the box with your phone. It’s a nice bonus given the amount of potential damage our phones are exposed to on a daily basis, and it looks pretty good without adding too much bulk.
The shell has open sides giving easy access to the volume rocker and power buttons on the right – all of which have a satisfying click when you press them like the rest of the phones in the edge 50 series.
There’s a USB-C port on the base, with the SIM tray on one side and a bottom firing speaker on the other. There’s no microSD card support on the edge 50 series, so luckily it comes with 256GB of on-board storage as a base.
The top of the phone has ‘Dolby Atmos’ branding, to show the tuning is an option with the speakers and connected earphones – though there’s no headphone jack, so it’s all Bluetooth.
There’s a 6.4” pOLED display on the front with a punch hole notch for the front facing camera. The phone also includes stereo sound thanks to the pairing of the earpiece to the bottom firing speaker on the base of the phone.
The pOLED display is flat and I love it. I can deal with a chunkier phone, and it feels nice and responsive. Motorola have used an LTPO display, capable of up to 120Hz refresh rate, as well as being able to cut down to a single 1Hz refresh rate to preserve your battery. It’s a great display with the refresh ramping up when required to provide nice smooth scrolling.
The refresh is great, however without the Super HD (2670 x 1220) resolution it probably wouldn’t look as good, but it looks crisp, clear and the details are sharp. It’s also very bright and able to easily be read in bright daylight and under the office lights.
As with most displays these days, you can tune the display to your liking, with options for Vivid (Default), Radiant and Natural tones, with the option to also tune the colour temperature manually. The Vivid is fine for me, but you may find them a little blown out, in which case the Natural can be a great option.
On the audio front, pairing the earpiece with the speaker gets you stereo sound, however it’s not fantastic – though it is serviceable and delivers quite high volume.
The edge 50 neo supports Dolby Atmos, and you’ll need to ensure you run through with the Dolby Atmos app to get the most out of the audio.
You can use the smart audio or spatial audio options but you’ll get the most out of spatial audio effects when using a good pair of headphones that support it. You can also choose to use one of the custom audio profiles which are decent, or you can modify the EQ in each.
While the rest of the motorola edge 50 family runs on the Qualcomm platform, Motorola have chosen to use the Mediatek Dimensity 7300 processor with 12GB RAM and 256GB of on-board storage (no microSD expansion).
The performance of the Dimensity 7300 is pretty impressive with the only notable slowness when booting the phone. Launching the camera is fast with the double power button or wrist flick gesture, and launching, as well as switching to apps is comfortably fast.
The phone is set with 4GB of virtual RAM thanks to the Motorola RAM Boost function. This feature uses internal storage space for temporary RAM, which works decently although slower than the actual RAM. You can manually ramp this up yourself up to 24GB total (12GB RAM + 12GB RAM Boost), or just let the system manage it.
In terms of benchmarks, we ran it through Geekbench and 3DMark and here’s how it went.
On the connectivity front, the motorola edge 50 neo 5G has sub-6GHz 5G connectivity as well as excellent 4G LTE connectivity – a good thing with the 3G network essentially being switched off now in Australia. My connections were solid, though your network may differ.
Locally you get tri-band Wi-Fi 6E support which works well, offering faster speeds and more stable connections, though obviously you’ll need a Wi-Fi 6E router to take advantage of it. You also get Bluetooth 5.3 which connects to earbuds and other devices easily.
Just like the rest of the edge 50 family, the edge 50 neo comes with a large battery, a 4,310mAh one in this case which Motorola says can last over 34 hours. On the charging front, you get a 68W TurboPower charger in the box – or you can put it on your wireless charging with support for up to 15W.
On the battery front, the motorola edge 50 neo has great battery life, including standby life if you’re not using it. I easily lasted a day with decently moderate to heavy usage – but if you’re used to charging every day you’ll be fine sticking it on over night.
On the charging front, the 68W charger is super fast. You can get a hell of a charge in a short time, with a 15 minute charge getting you to 38% and you can get a full charge in an hour.
The good news on the camera front is that motorola haven’t skimped on the camera. The neo includes the same system as the edge 50 – a 50 MP Sony – LYTIA 700C for the main sensor, a 13 MP Ultrawide sensor with 120° FOV and a 10 MP Telephoto sensor with 3x optical zoom – there’s also the 32MP selfie camera in the display.
As with the edge 50, the neo has Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS) on the main and telephoto sensors offering a steady shot when taking a snap – especially handy when zoomed in to steady your hand.
In terms of quality, the 50MP main sensor delivers some pretty great shots in most lighting conditions, even taking some great shots in low light. There can be a little blow out in the HDR with over-processing some colours as we saw on the edge 50, but overall it’s a good camera system.
The ultrawide captures more in terms of field of view but you tend to suffer in terms of quality with the details not as sharp and crisp – but it also doubles as a macro camera if you want to get right up close. For those who do like getting closer, the 3x Optical zoom is of course handy to have and snaps a good shot for the 10MP sensor. It can go up to 10x and 30x digital zoom however the final photo is quite pixelated.
The motorola edge 50 neo includes Android 14 and comes with the July security patch out of the box, with a couple of Over The Air (OTA) updates ready to when you turn it on. Once installed, teh updates get you up to the September Security Maintenance Release (SMR).
Motorola are actually offering a decent update schedule for the edge 50 neo, with 5 OS updates promised, as well as 5 years of Bi-Monthly SMR updates. Though it is now January and no new updates are available.
The Motorola software has been updated to Hello UX, an update for their familiar myUX. The interface is familiar, though now with moto ai built-in giving you camera ai functions for processing, super zoom and more, it also offers Magic Canvas and Style Sync.
Magic Canvas can generate wallpapers from text prompts, while Style Sync can generate wallpapers and device from photos, including matching to your outfit. In Australia, it seems Style Sync is missing, but Magic Canvas can be a fun addition.
The HelloUX build is just as clean as My UX with barely any installed software – but like the rest of the series, Adobe Scan, TikTok, Booking.com and Linkedin are included in the build, so you can uninstall these if you want.
Motroola does include their usual list of handy apps including a recorder, as well as Mtorola’s suite of apps including Family Space, which lets you set up a kid-friendly space so you can hand your phone over to the kids without worry, Moto Secure their security app including checkups and a secure space and more. You can also try Moto Unplugged, their digital detox app, or Smart Connect to connect your phone to more devices.
The Motorola software is very well put together and as always it’s simple and easy to find what you want with the Moto app, searching in the settings, or using the dedcated user manual. I like what Moto does here with the simple additions to functionality in their UX – their gestures for turning on the torch or camera are great – and even the update promise of 5 OS updates is pretty good for a phone in this range.
The motorola edge 50 neo is a great little phone, and it’s priced very well. While it’s ‘missing’ parts from the higher end models in the moto edge series, the corners they’ve cut serve only to make for a great little phone which fits the budget and still hits all the right notes.
The camera works really well for a phone in this series, while the Mediatek Dimensity 7300 processor and 12GB RAM works well with good performance across the board.
At $699 it’s a great representation of what Motorola can do for the price. Unfortunately that means there’s also competition in this price bracket from the likes of the Nothing 2a, as well as options from OPPO, Samsung and Google. Motorola even get in their own way with the very excellent edge 50 fusion.
All that said, the edge 50 neo is a great phone in this price range and if you get it on-sale, even better – but as it stands it’s certainly one to check out.
You can see the edge 50 neo at JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman, The Good Guys, OfficeWorks, Mobileciti, Amazon, and motorola Australia.
Daniel has been talking about, learning about and using tech since he was able to toggle switches and push buttons. If it flashes, turns on or off or connects he wants to use it, talk about it and learn more about it. Like this article? Buy me a coffee!
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