Motorola Edge 50 Neo review

Proper triple-camera setup

The camera hardware compared to last year's model is almost identical but adds another camera. A 10MP telephoto unit joins the 50MP main camera and the 13MP ultrawide one with 3x optical zoom.

The selfie unit is also like last year - 32MP and outputs 32MP photos, no pixel binning.

• Wide (main):50MP Sony IMX 896, 1/1.55", 1.0µm , f/1.8, 24mm, multi-directional PDAF, OIS; 4K@30fps
• Telephoto: 10MP Samsung S5K3K1, 1/3.94", 1.0µm, f/2.2, 73mm, PDAF, OIS; 4K@30fps
• Ultrawide: 13MP SK Hynix HI1336, 1/3.0", 1.12µm, f/2.2, 13mm, PDAF; 4K@30fps
• Front camera: 32MP Samsung ISOCELL S5KJD1, f/2.4, 1/3.14", 0.7µm; 4K@30fps

One thing we noticed about the camera app is how unresponsive and laggy it is. The shutter button is often unresponsive when you take several pictures in succession; switching between the cameras is slow, the feed in the viewfinder appears choppy and, for some reason, these issues are exacerbated when you shoot at night.

Daylight photos

Main camera

During the day, the main camera delivers nice and juicy photos. With enough sunlight, the stills look very sharp and detailed, while the dynamic range is adequate enough in most cases, but there seems to be inconsistency with the HDR. Some of the samples we took have very limited dynamic range, while other high-contrast scenes have crushed shadows. That style of processing leads to an overly contrasty look.

Main camera samples

The photos above were taken with the default Natural mode. We expected the Enhanced mode to produce images that are even more over the top, but the tonal rendition appeared much more natural. The Enhanced mode, however, boosted the colors too, but we still find these photos nicer.

Unfortunately, the Enhanced mode, even when turned on, isn't very consistent. The algorithm didn't apply the post-processing on some of the scenes. Or at least it's not as noticeable every time.

Main camera samples, Enhanced mode

The 50MP mode isn't bad as it introduces some extra detail, but it produces softer images overall, so we are not sure the tradeoff with the large file size is worth it.

50MP samples

Here are some portrait samples too.

Portraits: Normal • Portrait mode

2x zoom

The 2x zoom crops are decent enough and to no one's surprise, they adopt the same rendering style as the standard 1x Photo mode. There's some loss in sharpness, of course, but the system adds a little sharpening, which compensates. It's not over-the-top and the picture retains its natural look for the most part. Overall, we've seen better implementations.

2x crop zoom samples

2x Portraits: Normal • Portrait mode

3x telephoto camera

The 3x telephoto camera takes some sharp photos in daylight. However, the images tend to come through overcontrasty and even dark, just like the main cam's, so the two share similar processing traits.

Additionally, the photos are surprisingly soft at times, mostly indoors and in the shadows. In these cases, we also noticed a bit of extra noise in areas of uniform color.

3x telephoto camera samples

At the end of the day, the 3x telephoto unit is far from impressive. Kudos to Motorola for including a 3x telephoto unit on its budget Edge smartphone, but we hoped for better processing.

3-3.5x portraits: 3x Normal • 3.5x Portrait mode

Ultrawide camera

The 13MP ultrawide camera is not far in terms of quality compared to some competitors equipped with 8MP ultrawides.

The photos have low saturation and are dark and overcontrasty like the ones from the other two cameras. The fine detail is not particularly well rendered and there is plenty of noise.

Ultrawide camera samples

Since the ultrawide unit has autofocus, it enables close-up macro shots. The result is pretty good. You get relatively sharp and detailed stills.

Macro samples

Selfies

The selfies look nice, for the most part. They are definitely more lively than the shots taken with the back cameras. The dynamic range is impressive as the subject's face is always well-exposed, even in more challenging conditions. There's plenty of detail too.

Still, there's something odd about how they look. The subject's face can often appear glowy and slightly reddish, possibly due to the overly aggressive HDR.

Selfies

The camera settings allow you to choose between standard resolution (recommended) and high resolution. The former option does pixel binning and outputs 8MP samples, while the high resolution (the samples above) are shot in 32MP. The 32MP ones don't have any benefits compered to the 8MP, but they are not any worse either - maybe in low light, the 8MP ones will be better.

Standard resolution selfies

Low-light photos

Main camera

The camera triggers the Night mode automatically in low-light conditions. We took some photos with the dedicated Night mode as well, but we couldn't find any difference at all.

Main camera samples

In any case, sharpness and detail are good, noise is kept to a minimum and the dynamic range is wide. Highlights and shadows are well balanced, although the shadows are a bit too brightly exposed for our taste.

What you won't be able to see from these camera samples is that the camera is unreliable with focusing and overall quality at nighttime. About a third of the samples we took were extremely soft or out of focus. This applies to all cameras, not just the main one.

2x zoom

The low-light 2x zoom photos look quite poor from up close. They are quite soft and lack fine detail.

2x crop zoom samples

3x telephoto camera

The 3x telephoto camera benefits from the auto Night mode too and aside from the strong contrast, the photos generally look okay for this category of camera. If you avoid examining them from up close, you won't notice the lack of detail.

3x telephoto camera samples

Ultrawide camera

The ultrawide nighttime pictures are nothing to write home about. They are soft, sometimes noisy, lack fine detail and highlights can often be clipped.

Ultrawide camera samples

Video recording

The device supports 2160p video recording with all its cameras and recording is capped at 30fps. Unfortunately, when you start recording a video, you can only switch between the main and the telephoto camera, the ultrawide toggle disappears. You should start recording a standalone ultrawide video to use it.

You can check out the playlist below, which includes multiple video samples.

The 4K footage from the main camera is pretty decent when it comes to overall quality - sharpness, noise, detail and dynamic range. The colors are fine too.

The telephoto footage looks well too. It offers good quality and even better color reproduction.

The footage from the ultrawide camera is quite alright in terms of sharpness, contrast and dynamic range. If you don't count the weird hue the skies take, the colors are good as well.

The low-light footage taken with the main camera is good in terms of contrast and colors but the sharpness and the dynamic range are just okay.