Motorola Edge 50 Fusion review: a premium experience at a competitive price

After focusing on competition in the 30k segment, Motorola is now focusing on the 20k segment with the launch of the Moto Edge 50 Fusion. Although the starting price of the Moto Edge 50 Fusion is £20,999, the phone offers a premium experience to the Moto Edge 50 Pro, which we recently reviewed. It is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 processor, a 6.7 screen with a 144 Hz refresh rate and a 5000 mAh battery, all in a slim and light body.

Design

If you’ve seen the Moto Edge 40 and 50 Pro, you’ll immediately notice the similarity. The slim design of the phone is really good, making it one of the lightest phones in its lineup. It is available in three unique colors – Marshmallow Blue (our test variant), Forest Blue and Hot Pink. The back of the phone is made of vegan leather, which further enhances its aesthetics. And yes, the leather back gives it a smudge-free look, which we really liked. The phone is very easy to use and the port placement has been carefully designed for easy access. On the right side of the phone there is a power button and volume buttons. The SIM card slot, USB Type-C port and speaker grill are located at the bottom. There is an additional microphone at the top of the phone, as well as the Dolby atmos logo.

We also liked the unique design of the back of the phone, with built-in camera sensors and no protruding parts. The front is all screen with very narrow frames. At the top of the display you can see a punch-hole that houses the front camera. The fingerprint reader is built into the display and responds quickly.

What’s more, the phone has an IP68 certificate and Corning Gorilla Glass 5 to protect the phone.

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Display

The Moto Edge 50 Fusion is equipped with a 6.67-inch pOLED display with unlimited edge and Full HD+ resolution of 2400 x 1080 pixels, which gives a pixel density of 395 ppi. The pOLED display supports a 144Hz refresh rate, 10-bit color depth, 100% DCI-P3 wide color gamut, and a peak brightness of 1,600 nits, with a sustained high brightness mode of 1,200 nits.

The display also features a 360Hz touch sampling rate, Aqua Touch for underwater operation, and 720Hz PWM dimming for precise brightness control. The 20:9 display aspect ratio provides an immersive experience when viewing multimedia content and games.

operating system

The Motorola Edge 50 Fusion runs Android 14 with Motorola’s Hello UI skin, offering a near-stock Android experience with minimal bloatware. While it comes with some pre-installed Moto apps, it avoids third-party apps, providing clean software right out of the box. Motorola has committed to three major Android updates and four years of security patches, ensuring long-term software support and access to the latest features.

Editor

The Motorola Edge 50 Fusion is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 chipset, which is an upper mid-range processor built on a 4nm process. It has an octa-core processor with four high-performance Arm Cortex-A78 cores clocked at 2.4 GHz and four energy-saving Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 1.95 GHz. The Adreno 710 graphics processor is responsible for graphics processing.

In terms of performance, the Edge 50 Fusion delivers decent results, scoring 1,017 in single-core tests and 2,715 in multi-core tests in Geekbench 6. The GPU score of 1,795 is also decent for a mid-range chipset. While these results aren’t exceptional, they suggest the device should be able to handle most daily tasks and moderate gaming smoothly.

Speaking of gaming, the Edge 50 Fusion handles demanding games quite well, thanks to the durable Adreno 710 GPU and the overall processing power of the Snapdragon 7 Gen 2 chipset. However, for graphics-intensive titles, you may need to adjust the settings to maintain smooth performance.

Camera

Motorola Edge 50 Fusion has a powerful camera led by the Sony LYT-700C sensor with a resolution of 50 MP with an aperture of f/1.8 and a pixel size of 1.0 µm, which can be effectively increased to 2.0 µm thanks to Ultra Pixel technology. The main camera is equipped with optical image stabilization (OIS), which improves performance in low light and reduces blur in photos and videos.

The second camera is a 13MP ultra-wide-angle lens with f/2.2 aperture and 120-degree field of view, providing wide-angle versatility. For selfies, there is a 32 MP front camera with f/2.4 aperture and a pixel size of 0.7 µm, which can be increased to 1.4 µm thanks to Quad Pixel technology. The camera system also features a dual-pixel PDAF module for faster and more accurate autofocus.

When it comes to camera performance, the Edge 50 Fusion delivers impressive results, especially for the main camera. Images tend to enhance colors, resulting in vibrant and expressive tones. However, this may not suit everyone. The main camera captures good detail, especially in Ultra-res mode, and portrait mode provides precise edge detection for object separation.

The Edge 50 Fusion’s strong point is low-light photos, and the camera handles night photos well, both with and without night vision mode. Images show good detail retention and no banding issues, which is impressive for a mid-range device.

The 32MP front camera also does well, capturing decent selfies with accurate skin tones and good detail.

Battery

The Motorola Edge 50 Fusion comes with a 5000mAh battery that will keep most users going all day long, coupled with support for 68W TurboPower fast charging. While regular charging takes about 50-55 minutes to go from 1% to 100% , the standout feature is ‘Charge Boost’ mode, which, when manually activated, allows you to charge your phone from 20% to 100% in just 32-35 minutes – a real lifesaver when you need a quick top-up before heading out. It was also good to see that Motorola included a Type-C to Type-C cable and a compatible charger in the box.

Verdict

With the launch of the Moto Edge 50 Fusion, Motorola is seen to be aggressively pursuing its efforts to capture the mid-segment of the Indian smartphone market after a strong play in the premium segment.

Featuring the powerful Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 chipset, a vibrant 144Hz pOLED display, impressive cameras, and all-day battery life with fast charging, the Edge 50 Fusion ticks all the boxes. By providing a premium experience at a competitive price, the phone will heat up the fierce competition in this highly competitive segment, giving consumers even more attractive options to choose from.