Motorola’s Edge 50 Pro: a flagship smartphone in all but price

It always amazes me how reviewers get hot, sweaty and super excited about flagship smartphones while mid-range devices languish in the background. The real irony here is that the middle end of town sees a hell of a lot of innovation as engineers lean into new tech to deliver more for less. The net result of this trend is that the boundaries between mid-range and flagship smart devices are becoming increasingly blurred.

This was very much on my mind when Motorola sent me their new Edge 50 Pro hardware, which sports a unique design and some impressive specs considering its reasonable midrange sticker price.

The designers at Moto clearly wanted the Edge 50 Pro to stand out amongst its midrange peers in the massively overcrowded Android me-too market. My review unit was black and sported a grippy rubberised (vegan leather in marketing speak) back. This made handling the Edge 50 Pro a delight. It wasn’t slippery and was warmer on a cold morning than the usual aluminium/glass combo of most other phones.

Its chassis has a smooth, almost organic feel with soft curves on its edges and a camera bump, making it feel quite luxurious. The camera bump all but disappears into the rear of the Edge 50 Pro but the three shooters and flash have aluminium surrounds which add a bit of elegance to an already stylish-looking design.

Spinning it around reveals an edge-to-edge curved screen that’s reminiscent of Samsung’s Galaxy S10 Plus. Its display is an OLED 6.7-inch and supports HDR10+ and 10-bit colour, with an impressive 1220 x 271 resolution, all of which makes it super crisp and vivid. Thanks to a peak brightness level of 2000 nits, using it under direct sunlight is doable. All told, you get a lot of display for mid-range hardware. Topping things off, the display has a 144Hz refresh rate which gives the Edge 50 Pro a responsive and smooth feel. Under the display, there’s also a fingerprint scanner.

One test I always try with slab-style smartphones is one-handed use. In this regard, the Edge 50 Pro acquitted itself well. This is largely thanks to it weighing in at a mere 186g and the aforementioned grippy coating. One-handed use aside, other premium specs seem to have also slipped in under Moto’s mid-range radar. These include IP68 dust and water resistance as well as support for Qi wireless charging. This means it’ll survive the odd dunking or even a trip to the beach and if you have a Qi wireless charger, you don’t have to fart about with cables. Add to this the use of Corning Gorilla Glass for its front screen and it feels built to last.

While the phone does have stereo speakers, and Moto’s blurb says it supports Dolby Atmos, don’t expect audio miracles. Given the liberal use of Atmos and Dolby marketing fairy dust these days, I wasn’t surprised to find that while the speakers are clear and plenty loud, they don’t really add any headroom to audio. If you want a decent hi-fi experience, stick with headphones/earbuds.

The beating heart of the Edge 50 Pro is a Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 CPU and you can get a range of storage capacities up to 512GB along with a generous helping of 12GB of RAM. For a midrange device, this is a decent spec, even if it doesn’t quite match the performance of newer flagship phone silicon. For casual gaming, I didn’t notice any lags or delays, but firing up a demanding game title such as Genshin Impact or Alien Isolation saw a perceptible drop in frame rates. That’s only to be expected after taking its sticker price into consideration. That said, its specs are going to be more than adequate for day-to-day use and light games such as Candy Crush Saga.

The Edge 50 Pro also offers a standout camera setup. Moto has opted for a 10MP telephoto, 13MP ultrawide and 50MP main shooters. The combination is unusual at this price point and gives great photos and videos.  This was particularly noticeable with the 50MP camera. Thanks to its 1/1.55-inch sensor plus a wide f/1.4 aperture and OIS plus ToF autofocus it delivered impressive results that I’d have not expected on a mid-range phone. The 10MP telephoto shooter also did an admirable job of zooming up to 3x before digital zoom came into play. Again, this isn’t something you’d expect at this price point.

Moto also earns brownie points by not slathering Android into its own customised skin. Instead, you get an almost stock version of Android 14. In practice, this makes the 50 Edge Pro feel a lot like Google’s flagship phone, the pixel in use, which is definitely a good thing. There are a few extras Motorola has added. These include the Moto app which provides a veritable boatload of Android customisation options, as well as access to Motorola-specific tricks such as twisting your wrist to fire up the camera. Moto also includes ReadyFor, which connects to Windows PCs, and you can also use the phone as a PC webcam. Connecting it via USB to HDMI also gives you a working desktop UI on a monitor or TV. Doing this and pairing up a mouse and keyboard via Bluetooth transforms the Edge 50 Pro into a fully-fledged pocketable productivity tool.

Running an HD looped video test saw its battery last just over 8 hours with around 20% charge left in its tank. The other bonus is that the Edge 50 Pro supports 125W fast charging and in a move that other vendors should take note of Motorola also bundles a 125W charger, which at this price point is a pleasant surprise. Fast charging isn’t just an idle boast from Moto’s marketing team, as it went from zero to 50% in just over 7 minutes and a full charge took just shy of 20 minutes.

The Edge 50 Pro is an impressive example of the value for money you can get in the mid-range smartphone market. Most of its specs and performance are comparable to phones commanding a significantly higher sticker price and it’s a looker too, with its attractive finishes and design lending it a whiff of sophistication.

https://www.motorola.com/nz/smartphones-motorola-edge-50-pro/p