Motorola Edge 30 Fusion review

10-bit, HDR10+, 144Hz P-OLED display

The Motorola Edge 30 Fusion comes with a spacious 6.55-inch P-OLED display. The "P" there means the panel is using a plastic substrate and it's the sort of panel that LG makes. Other than that, it doesn't translate into any tangible differences in the display's performance compared to Samsung's AMOLEDs.

The panel here looks mighty impressive on paper. It has 10-bit color and is hardware certified for HDR10+. On top of that, it has a native refresh rate of 144Hz and supports a few other refresh rate modes, which we will cover in a bit.

First off, though, let's talk about brightness and contrast. The Edge 30 Fusion excels in both metrics. At 100% brightness on the slider it managed a very respectable 516 nits.

Under bright lighting conditions, the brightness overdrive mode managed to boost that to a truly impressive 946 nits. That figure essentially allows the Edge 30 Fusion to rub shoulders with some of the full-on flagships on today's market. In case there was any doubt - the Edge 30 Fusion is perfectly usable outdoors, even in bright sunlight.

In terms of color the Edge 30 Fusion has two color modes - saturated and natural. There is also a color temperature slider available for adjustment.

Color modes

By default, the phone ships in saturated mode, which targets the DCI-P3 color space and is relatively accurate. Not accurate enough for color-critical work, but not far off either. This mode results in slightly warm color reproduction. You can mostly fix that with the color temperature slider.

Natural color mode aims for the sRGB color space and nails it on the head. Its deltaE values fall comfortably within what would be considered color-accurate and good enough for color-sensitive work.

As already mentioned, the Edge 30 Fusion has a 10-bit display panel, which is particularly great for displaying HDR content. The display itself is certified for HDR10+. As for HDR decoder support, the Edge 30 Fusion reports HLG, HDR10 and HDR10+ in software, with only Dolby Vision missing from the list. It is rarely found on mobile phones, so it is not a major loss.

HDR support • Widevine • Netflix playback capabilities

The Edge 30 Fusion also has the highest possible Widevine L1 DRM certification, allowing streaming services like Netflix to offer up FullHD streams and fully saturate the display's resolution. No complaints there.

Mind you, at the time of writing, Netflix does not offer HDR on the Edge 30 Fusion, but that's likely to change as they update their internal whitelists.

High refresh rate handling

As already mentioned, the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion has a 144Hz refresh rate display. It offers a total of three refresh rate options in settings - 60Hz, 144Hz and Auto mode. The former two are really straightforward - the phone is simply set to a static 60Hz or 144Hz, and that's that.

Display refresh rate options • Available display refresh rate modes

However, 60Hz and 120Hz are not the only refresh rate modes available on the Edge 30 Fusion. That list actually includes 48Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz and 144Hz. Auto refresh rate mode promises Ai-driven automatic refresh rate switching and delivers on that promise as well, with a very dynamic and content-aware system in place.

What basically happens in practice is that the OS actively monitors what is currently on screen. If it sees any motion, it then determines whether it requires a boost up to 90Hz or higher to 120Hz and acts accordingly. The system works exceptionally well in our experience.

The only downside is that we never actually saw it trigger 144Hz mode or 48Hz mode. The latter would probably be reserved for the AOD, though, and refresh rate measurements there can be wonky, so we can't say for sure. Here is a quick video showcasing how well Auto refresh rate mode detects things like the BlurBusters UFO test in a browser and then a video playing in both a local player and YouTube and switches to the optimal refresh rate on the fly.

Unfortunately, the Automatic refresh rate switching mode isn't quite as reliable when it comes to gaming. Some games we tried ran at 120Hz while others at 60Hz, despite the fact that we know these titles can render at above 60fps, and the Edge 30 Fusion has the performance to facilitate that as well.

Games running in Auto mode

Thankfully, the fixed 144Hz mode works great with games and lets them render well above 60fps. Users should probably stick to it when gaming on the Edge 30 Fusion.

Games running in 144Hz mode

Overall, despite a few oddities here and there, we are quite impressed with the dynamic, accurate and content-aware way automatic refresh rate switching works on the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion. It has one of the better systems around.

Battery life

The Motorola Edge 30 Fusion has a 4,400 mAh battery pack on board. That's not huge, but not small either, especially considering the phone's thin 7.5mm profile and relatively light weight at 172 grams.

The phone does quite well in terms of battery endurance, managing a solid 101 hours in our proprietary, standardized test. That won't be topping any charts, but it is a decent showing for a battery of this size.

3G Talk time is, perhaps, a bit on the lower end of what we would expect out of this particular battery capacity and chipset combo, but not out of the ordinary. All other numbers fall well in line with expectations.

Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSerDevice app. The endurance rating denotes how long the battery charge will last you if you use the device for an hour of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. More details can be found here.

Video test carried out in 60Hz refresh rate mode. Web browsing test done at the display's highest refresh rate whenever possible. Refer to the respective reviews for specifics. To adjust the endurance rating formula to match your own usage patterns, check out our all-time battery test results chart, where you can also find all phones we've tested.

Charging speed

The Edge 30 Fusion ships with a whopping 68W Power Delivery fast charger. Though, straight off the bat, we should note that while testing the charging behavior of the Edge 30 Fusion, it never actually sucked back anywhere close to 68W from the charger, so our best guess is that the charger is just over specced.

In any case, the Edge 30 Fusion is a really fast charging device. It went from dead up to 82% in just 30 minutes, and a full charge took 52 minutes on the dot. That's rather impressive, even if not industry-leading.

30min charging test (from 0%)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  100%
• OnePlus Nord 2T
  99%
• Poco F4
  92%
• Motorola Edge 30 Pro
  85%
• Motorola Edge 30 Fusion
  82%
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro
  78%
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  74%
• Motorola Edge 20 Pro
  53%
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  53%
• Motorola Moto G200 5G
  52%
• Samsung Galaxy S21 FE 5G
  51%
• Poco X3 Pro
  50%
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  45%
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 (65W PD)
  31%
• Motorola Moto G62
  24%

Time to full charge (from 0%)

Lower is better

• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G
  0:16h
• OnePlus Nord 2T
  0:32h
• Poco F4
  0:38h
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  0:45h
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro
  0:48h
• Motorola Edge 30 Fusion
  0:52h
• Motorola Edge 30 Pro
  0:53h
• Poco X3 Pro
  1:08h
• Motorola Moto G200 5G
  1:14h
• Samsung Galaxy S21 FE 5G
  1:15h
• Motorola Edge 20 Pro
  1:17h
• Samsung Galaxy A53 5G
  1:24h
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  1:28h
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 (65W PD)
  1:42h
• Motorola Moto G62
  1:46h

One thing that is worth mentioning and commendable is that the Edge 30 Fusion uses standard USB Power Delivery for charging rather than some odd proprietary spec. That's part of why it gets to enjoy the convenience of a standard USB Type-C to Type-C cable for charging.

Plus, its bundled charger is quite versatile. For its main charging profile, the charger uses PD + PPS, but it also happens to support QC5 via PD, as well as QC 2.0 with fixed 5V, 9V and 12V outputs and QC 3.0 with a range of 3.6 to 12 volts. Last but not least, the charger can also deliver the odd Apple 5V@2.4A output. Meaning that with the right Type-C to Lightning cable, you could also charge an iPhone at reasonable speeds. Not to mention that 68W PD is plenty for many laptops, making the charger truly versatile. Too bad it only has the one Type-C port on it, though.

Speaker test

The Motorola Edge 30 Fusion has a hybrid stereo speaker setup. That is to say that there is a dedicated bottom-firing speaker for one of the channels and the amplified earpiece handles the other one. This is a very common approach nowadays, particularly for mid-range phones.

In our standardized testing, the Edge 30 Fusion managed an impressive, VERY GOOD loudness rating. Its frequency response curve is also surprisingly clean and tight. There is no excessive distortion at high volumes, and voices sound nice and clear.

Overall - a very, very good speaker setup that leaves little to be desired. Frankly, not an unexpected outcome, given the Dolby Atmos branding on the box of the Edge 30 Fusion and the phone's top bezel.

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.