Huawei Mate 50 Pro review

10-bit OLED display

The Huawei Mate 50 Pro features a 6.74-inch OLED screen with curved glass, which provides the illusion of a curved display panel. The panel underneath is flat and has a 2,616 x 1,212 pixels resolution (428ppi), and there is a long notch for the Face ID system and the earpiece.

The Mate 50 Pro's screen comes with all the bells and whistles like 120Hz refresh rate, 10-bit color depth for over a billion colors, HDR10+ support, and there is high frequency 1440Hz PWM brightness dimming for users sensitive to regular PWM dimming.

Let's start with the brightness test. The Mate 50 Pro's display panel offers about 570 nits of maximum brightness when using the slider manually. The screen will light up to about 950 nits in bright light, even if you don't have auto brightness on. This is great for outdoor use, and we had no issues even on the brightest days.

The minimum brightness at point white was below 2 nits, which is great, too. Plus, this Mate 50 Pro also offers 1440Hz PWM dimming for excellent panel performance under low brightness conditions.

Color accuracy

The Mate 50 Pro screen supports both DCI-P3 and sRGB color spaces. You choose between Normal and Vivid colors from the display settings, and you can adjust the color temperature for each of these modes.

Color settings

Normal is the default option, and it automatically switches between color spaces. It offers excellent color accuracy to sRGB with an average deltaE of 1.7. The Vivid mode accuracy is not great as it has a noticeable bluish tinge, but if you adjust it to a Warm color temperature, you will get rid of that.

Resolution and refresh rate

The screen has a resolution between 1080p and 1440p - 2616 x 1212px, making up for 428ppi density. You can choose between Smart resolution (dynamic adjustments), High (native) 1212p or the low 808p for battery-saving purposes.

Resolution • Refresh rate

The Huawei Mate 50 Pro offers three refresh rate options - Standard (60Hz), High (120Hz), and Dynamic (switching between 60Hz and 120Hz).

The High (120Hz) mode always uses 120Hz in compatible apps and interfaces and switches to 60Hz for those that don't support it as well as video playback/streaming.

The Dynamic option would use 90Hz for EMUI and a handful of apps. Itreverted to 60Hz for most apps we installed. We saw only benchmarks reach beyond 90fps in this mode.

Finally, the Standard 60Hz mode is self-explanatory - you get consistent 60Hz refresh rate all around.

HDR and streaming

The Huawei Mate 50 Pro supports HDR10+ - something confirmed by all hardware scanning apps. It also comes with Widevine L1 DRM support, which should allow high-res HDR streaming.

Most streaming apps, Netflix, Prime and YouTube included, offer Full HD (YT also offers 4K) streaming. HDR is not available in any of them, though.

Battery life

The Huawei Mate 50 Pro is powered by a 4,700mAh battery.

In our Active Use Test, the Huawei Mate 50 Pro scored average times for call and web browsing, but good for gaming and video streaming. It is on par with the Xiaomi 13T Pro, close to the Honor Magic5 Pro, but behind the Galaxy S23 Ultra.

Charging speed

The Huawei Mate 50 Pro supports Huawei's 66W SuperCharger and 50W Wireless SuperCharge. The retail box contains the 66W adapter and a 6A-rated USB cable, so you can fast charge the Mate 50 Pro right out of the box.

We've completed our battery charging test, and the Mate 50 Pro did great. Starting from empty battery, the bundled charger refilled 45% in 15 minutes and 79% in 30 minutes.

30min charging test (from 0%)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 10T
  100%
• Huawei nova 10 Pro
  99%
• vivo X80 Pro
  88%
• Huawei Mate 40 Pro (66W bundled)
  87%
• Huawei Mate 50 Pro
  79%
• Huawei P50 Pro
  73%
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  73%
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (45W)
  60%
• Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max
  48%
• Huawei Mate 30 Pro
  41%

Finally, it took 41 minutes for the Mate 50 Pro to go from 0% to 100%, and that's plenty fast.

Time to full charge (from 0%)

Lower is better

• OnePlus 10T
  0:19h
• Huawei nova 10 Pro
  0:31h
• vivo X80 Pro
  0:39h
• Huawei Mate 50 Pro
  0:41h
• Huawei Mate 40 Pro (66W bundled)
  0:45h
• Huawei P50 Pro
  0:50h
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  0:50h
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (45W)
  0:59h
• Huawei Mate 30 Pro
  1:34h
• Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max
  1:52h

Like many other phones, the Mate 50 Pro supports Smart Charge, which drops the charging speed once it reaches 80%. You can also choose the safety mark yourself if you prefer to avoid it being fixed at 80%.

Huawei Mate 50 Pro supports reverse wired and wireless charging. You need to turn on the wireless option from within the Battery options.

Speakers

The Huawei Mate 50 Pro features a hybrid stereo speaker system - there is one dedicated speaker at the bottom, while the earpiece acts as a second front-facing one.

There is no sound outlet on top of the phone, as was the case with the Mate 40 Pro and the P50 Pro.

The Huawei Mate 50 Pro scored a Very Good mark on our loudness test, and, indeed, we were thrilled with its speakers' loudness.

If you listen to our samples recorded in the studio environment, you will probably hear the good treble and the presence of bass, though the midrange tones seem muted, lacking even. That's because of the odd balance of the speakers and how we position the phones in our studio - landscape orientation, screen against the microphone. This will most likely be how you use it most of the time, though.

The earpiece has good enough loudness, but it's responsible mostly for the treble, while the bottom speaker has a full range and excellent vocals. So, if you tilt it slightly, you will get superb rich and crisp sound.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.