Motorola’s $999 Edge 50 Pro reviewed: almost everything you need

The mid-range may well be the new high-end, at least based on what we’re beginning to see from companies. Is the Moto Edge 50 Pro a perfect example of that, or does it still need work?

Phones are a-changing, and so are the price tags they come with. While a thousand dollars used to be the mark of the high-end phone several years ago, these days it’s not unusual to find flagship territory sitting between two and three grand. With great phones comes great spend, it seems.

That’s a problem for many people, particularly folks who think a thousand dollars should still go as far as it once did. Sure, the economy has changed and the cost of living with it, but mobiles are one aspect of technology that seems more likely to reach deeper into our pockets than ever before.

So what if you want to spend the same thousand dollar price point, but still command high-end tech?

Believe it or not, there are options in the mid-range, particularly in the upper-end of that mid-range. While the smartphone squeeze is real and high-end charges a higher price tag than ever, Motorola’s recent sub-$1K phones show you don’t need to always spend up to get a great phone, even if it may come with a quirk or two.

Design

Slightly more flagship than other handsets out there, Motorola’s Edge 50 Pro reminds us of flagship phones from a few years ago. The look is high-end, offering a curved screen and a frame that’s difficult to see.

It’s a little like Huawei’s P30 Pro, except made by Moto and a touch more modern, complete with a highly grippable back. Our Moto Edge 50 Pro review unit used the vegan leather back, which offers texture as opposed to slippery glass, but it’s also a texture that can feel a little greasy and weird.

Vegan leather can mean lots of things. It can mean paper or highly textured plastic. In the Moto Edge 50 Pro, it’s a look that can feel odd, and even leave a lot of fingerprints depending on the hands that held it.

We’re not vibing with the vegan leather on this phone, but you might be totally fine with it.

Features

However, we’re far more into what’s under the hood than the outside of the phone, which includes a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chip, 12GB RAM, and 256GB storage. There’s no microSD slot here, so that 256GB is the most you’ll have to work with, though you can take some away and use it to boost the memory, too, if need be.

Android 14 arrives on the Edge 50 Pro out of the box, as do a few connections. Except one USB-C port at the bottom for charging, data, and wired earphones if you use them, while wireless covers 4G, 5G, Near-Field Communication (NFC) for Google Pay, GPS, Bluetooth 5.4, and WiFi 6E’s 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax.

You can also expect to find some decent media chops here, including Snapdragon Sound with Dolby Atmos tuning across stereo speakers, plus a three-camera system on the back with one more on the front.

At the back, it’s a camera system made up of a 50 megapixel F1.4 wide camera, 13 megapixel F2.2 ultra-wide, and a 10 megapixel 3X telephoto, as well. On the front, you’ll find a 50 megapixel camera there, too, though it’s a smaller sensor with only an F1.9 aperture.

All of this sits under a 6.7 inch pOLED screen that uses curved glass to minimise the bezels, and runs a Super HD resolution of 2712×1220 at 144Hz, while the back is a choice of either polymer or vegan leather (we’re reviewing the vegan leather variant).

It encases a 4500mAh battery in a design that’s IP68 water resistant. You’ll also find an in-screen fingerprint sensor in this phone, as well.

In-use

With decent specs, a fingerprint sensor, and facial login, using the Moto Edge 50 Pro is rather like using any other Android phone, plus with Motorola’s extra gestures on top.

You can tap the phone to wake it, shake the phone to launch the camera, or even double tap the power button to bring that camera up, as well. It’s Android with some extra niceties on top, and that is always appreciated.

Android is (as ever) easy to use, with a choice of on-screen buttons or gestures, while the phone itself supports widgetised home screens and the left-most as the Google Discovery rolling feed of stories (and ads) that relate to your life. Ish.

There’s some water resistance in the phone for good measure, handy because accidents do happen, and the back of the phone has enough texture to at least prevent obvious slips if they happen, too.

You can expect some AI features in the Edge 50 Pro, as well. This is the year AI is expected on more devices, after all.

In this phone, it means wallpaper generation and AI-enhanced photo editing, as Moto takes a page from Google’s inclusion of Photos edit features normally seen on the Pixel range.

Performance

With a Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 on-board, we largely expected the performance of the Moto Edge 50 Pro to be capable. And it is… up to a point.

In benchmarks, the Edge 50 Pro delivers acceptable speeds, achieving improvements over the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 used in the Moto Razr 40.

However, it doesn’t quite hold a candle to the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 used in another $999 phone, the Moto ThinkPhone, which was an easy recommendation for Motorola last year. One year’s difference has seen Motorola change chip types, and the ThinkPhone trounces the performance of the Edge 50 Pro, as does both the 2022 Pixel 7a and the chip used in this year’s Pixel 8a, also used in last year’s Pixel 8.

Real-world use paints some of that performance picture, too.

Throughout our review period with the Edge 50 Pro, we found slow downs were a fairly regular occurrence. Apps wouldn’t always load when they were triggered, gestures didn’t always get picked up, and swiping to write would often leave the phone struggling to recognise the word, only to suddenly enter it after we’d moved on.

The performance should have been good. The fact that it wasn’t made it more confusing.

Much like other mid-range phones, the Edge 50 Pro has its moments where performance can be a struggle. Sometimes it’s fine, but others things go awry. Be patient either with it and you should be fine.

At least the 5G handles its own, with solid speeds available from this mid-ranger, hitting as high as 446Mbps in our tests on the Telstra 5G network, as operated by Mate in Sydney, Australia.

Camera

Like the performance, the camera can be a little iffy, and the system performance may even be to blame.

Technically, the chops of the Moto Edge 50 Pro’s camera appears better than expected: a three-camera system with 50 megapixels for wide, 13 for ultra-wide, and 10 for a 3X telephoto. That’s not terrible, and brings the extra telephoto camera to a sub-$1K price point, something that isn’t always there. Or ever.

But when you get down to using the whole camera system, the performance lets down the experience, largely because it doesn’t always even respond.

Line up the shot and press the on-screen shutter, and there’s a good chance the phone won’t even pay attention to your pressing of that button. That’s what happened a whole lot more times than expected for us, with shots missed when the on-screen action did nothing.

Fortunately, you can also take photos using the physical volume key, but even that would sometimes mess up a bit, and we think we know why: the performance.

There’s a bit of a theme here, but it’s one that you can be patient with, because the results aren’t bad at all… mostly.

Shots are often sharp with solid colour recreation and plenty of vibrancy, almost to the point where the colours can seem oversaturated. It’s difficult to imagine that these colours are what Motorola is talking about when it advertises Pantone-validated colour, and that may have more to do with skin tone when the images work.

However, we found some images fail the mark completely, however, blowing out highlights as if the camera just didn’t know what to do with the extra detail. Upon deeper analysis, the failures may have actually been a problem with Moto’s portrait processing, blending images to a failed result.

Other times, the camera’s reluctance to fire quickly means capturing images that are softer than they should be. It’s not a problem with the light, but one of speed; images capture blur and can be unforgivable.

Between the saturation of colours, problems with the portrait engine, and issues with blur and speed, the Edge 50 Pro camera can be incredibly frustrating. Ultimately, it’s hardly reliable, which is just such a shame.

Battery

The battery isn’t too shabby, however, achieving a good day of battery life with no problems, and closer to 1.5 days from its 4500mAh battery if you needed to flex that muscle slightly.

Most people will likely want to charge the Edge 50 Pro nightly, but the fact of the matter is you don’t need to charge it until you go to bed, and if you’re out later, it should last a little longer, too.

Helping this phone is the assortment of charging options, which includes wireless and high-speed wired charging. We found a meaty 125W charger in the box, and woooo… that’s enough to handle many a laptop. Not too shabby.

Value

All of this comes in a phone hitting the high-end of the mid-range, but still the mid-range by today’s standards.

Priced at $999, the Moto Edge 50 Pro comes with most of what you’d be looking for in a phone: a big screen, big battery, several cameras, 5G, water resistance, and even a surprisingly large fast charger you might use for other devices in your home.

That’s not a bad package for the price by all accounts.

What needs work?

Indeed, most of the Edge 50 Pro package is solid. There are a lot of features to consider in this phone, and while it isn’t technically a flagship model, Motorola has managed to get most of the way there.

But the performance may need you to just wait a bit, and it’s a similar situation with the camera. It can technically deliver some nice shots, but it’s slow to fire and may find you a little frustrated at times, as well.

It’s a shame, too, because the specs should line up to a good result. The Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 may not be the most high-end of all Qualcomm’s chips, but it’s no slouch. Likewise, the support for 12GB RAM should make the Edge 50 Pro more than formidable.

And yet the performance issues were noticeable in our time reviewing the Edge 50 Pro. They were difficult to escape observation.

It’s also entirely possible that the issues were a result of the curved screen, something phone makers have largely moved on from in recent years. Curved displays can produce issues with erroneous touches, and that can affect performance, perceived or otherwise. It is entirely possible that’s what we were seeing.

The problem, however, is that the Edge 50 Pro still exhibits these issues. In short, you will likely experience the slow downs the way we did, regardless of the reason.

Whatever the fault, neither makes for a compelling reason to buy the Edge 50 Pro until both are cleared up.

Final thoughts (TLDR)

It’s entirely possible these issues can and will be fixed, that said. If and when Moto does just that, the Edge 50 Pro will be a solid phone at a solid price.

You get just about everything you could want from a phone these days: a lovely screen, a nice design, a capable camera, water resistance, wireless charging, fast wired charging complete with the charging pack… there’s little reason to not admire what Moto has delivered in the Edge 50 Pro. Except the performance, which could be a lot better.

It’s almost everything you need. If Moto fixes that, the Edge 50 Pro will be all the phone you need. Right now, it’s only some of the way there.