Motorola Edge 50 Fusion review

Display

The Edge 50 Fusion has a large 6.7-inch P-OLED display. We have the international version of the phone, which means we get a 144Hz refresh rate. The panel has a FullHD+ native resolution of 1080 x 2400 pixels, which is a bit less than the 1220 x 2712 pixels of the Edge 50 Pro and Edge 50 Ultra, but is still perfectly sharp at around 393 ppi.

The Edge 50 Fusion gets pretty bright for its class. We measured right around 520 nits by maxing out the slider in manual mode, which is perfectly reasonable and on par with most competitors. In auto mode, the phone topped out at 1,322 nits in our standardized testing - more than adequate to be perfectly usable outdoors.

We measured just 2.8 nits of minimum brightness at point white.

The display on the Edge 50 Fusion has 8-bit color depth and a few color modes, including one targeting the sRGB color space and one for the DCI-P3 one.

The Edge 50 Fusion can refresh at up to 144Hz. The display supports 60Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz and 144Hz modes. The Latin American version of the phone is limited to 120Hz. Our 144Hz global unit has four refresh rate modes - Auto, 60Hz, 120Hz and 144Hz.

The 60Hz mode is quite self-explanatory. It just locks the refresh rate at 60Hz. All of the other modes employ some form of automatic switching. The default Auto mode only goes up to 120Hz and tends to frequently switch to 90Hz as well, depending on how much motion there is on screen. Leave the phone for a few seconds, and the refresh rate drops down to 60Hz to conserve power. Even if this is not the most sophisticated switching logic, it is generally good enough to improve efficiency.

120Hz and 144Hz modes also switch refresh rates automatically. Only the latter one actually goes up to 144Hz. The actual switching logic doesn't change much and remains consistent. It is worth noting that some apps tend to insist on 60Hz or 90Hz operation, and there is no list of per-app settings to override that behavior.

We naturally tried high refresh rate gaming as well with a selection of titles we know can push past the 60fps mark if allowed to. Generally speaking, we had little luck while using the default Auto mode. Switching over to 144Hz mode allowed all of our test games to break the 60fps barrier, making high refresh rate gaming perfectly feasible on the Edge 50 Fusion.

Overall, we are pleased with how the device handles its high refresh rate capabilities.

Unfortunately, the Edge 50 Fusion lacks any kind of HDR video support. The display doesn't have HDR certification, and there isn't even any HDR decoder support, as reported by the OS. On a more positive note, the phone has the highest possible Widevine L1 DRM certification, allowing apps like Netflix to offer up FullHD streams to saturate the native display resolution.

Battery life

The Motorola Edge 50 Fusion scored a very decent 12:40 hours of Active Use Score in our proprietary testing. While not a battery champ by any means, it did pretty well, especially in the call and video streaming tests. We do wish web browsing and gaming took less of a toll on the battery, but it is still a solid showing overall.

Charging speed

The Edge 50 Fusion has a 5,000 mAh battery and supports Motorola's 68W TurboPower charging. You get a compatible wall charger and a USB Type-C to Type-C cable right in the box.

The Edge 50 Fusion is not a particularly fast-charging device. Still, it holds its own reasonably well, managing to go from dead to 33% in 15 minutes and then 60% in 30 minutes. A full charge takes just over an hour - pretty reasonable in our book.

Speakers - loudness and quality

The Motorola Edge 50 Fusion has a hybrid stereo speaker setup. There is one dedicated bottom-firing speaker, and the amplified earpiece takes care of the other channel. That inherently makes the setup not ideally balanced since one speaker is larger than the other and faces downward instead of at the front. Even so, the Edge 50 Fusion sounds surprisingly good, with a rich, wide sound stage and decent stereo separation. It is worth noting that proper stereo only works when the phone is rotated horizontally.

The Edge 50 Fusion earned a 'Very Good' rating for loudness in our speaker test. It did a bit better than the Edge 50 Pro, but not by a lot. The 50 Fusion sounds notably better to our ears than any of the Edge 40s, bringing better low-end presence and a more balanced response higher up the frequency range.

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.

The Edge 50 Fusion has Dolby Atmos support, including a Smart audio mode that automatically adjusts sound, a few equalizer presets and a full manual equalizer mode as well. There is also a volume leveler and Spatial audio for supported sources.

Connectivity

The Edge 50 Fusion is available in a single or dual-SIM variant. It supports eSIM as well. It has SA/NSA Sub-6 5G connectivity. For location services, it supports GPS, GLONASS and GALILEO.

For local connectivity, there is dual-band Wi-Fi ac and Bluetooth 5.2 with LE support. There is an NFC on board but no radio receiver or 3.5mm audio jack.

The Type-C port on the Edge 50 Fusion is backed up by a USB 2.0 data connection, which means a theoretical maximum transfer rate of 480 Mbps. The port has Host/OTG support, but unfortunately, there is no video output support. So essentially, there is no Motorola's Ready For/SmartConnect support for conecting an external displa over a cable connection.

The Edge 50 Fusion has a pretty full set of sensors. There is a TDK-Invensense ixm4x6xx accelerometer and gyroscope combo, a QST qmc630x magnetometer and compass combo and a Sensortek stk3acx light and hardware proximity sensor combo. There is no barometer on board.