Motorola Edge 50 Ultra smartphone review – The periscope zoomer with a huge storage capacity

In the past years, Motorola hasn't skimped on trying out unusual ideas on its high-end phones: The packaging smells of a specially developed fragrance, unique colors are available in cooperation with Pantone and special materials are no longer taboo at Motorola.

You can already smell this scent when opening up the Edge 50 Ultra's packaging—whether it smells pleasant or a bit too much is a matter of taste according to an unrepresentative test conducted in our editorial department. The fact that the Motorola Edge 50 Ultra doesn't have quite as wide a case as other phones, on the other hand, is well received by all. The screen's glass is pulled over the side of the Edge, which allows for slim edges—but not everyone likes this design.

Some colors and materials aren't your everyday ones. Thankfully, Forest Gray (a dark gray which appears almost black with a faux leather back) should be a suitable color for anyone who likes their phone to look a little more toned down. If you want to attract attention, then you can go for Nordic Wood, which sees the phone sporting a back cover made with real wood. Alternatively, there is Peach Fuzz—an orange color that again makes use of faux leather as a material. The latter is also Pantone's color of the year.

Regardless of which version you go for, you'll always get a relatively lightweight phone if you take into account its 6.7-inch screen: The Motorola Edge 50 Ultra weighs 197 grams. Its design is super elegant, especially the slight curve from the back of the phone to the protruding camera module makes its integration look very harmonious. The device's silhouette looks very slim and it feels nice to hold thanks to the materials used for the screen and back being pulled over the phone's edges.

The Motorola smartphone's build is also nice and clean—only the transition between the frame and the back could be a little smoother. The Motorola smartphone is IP68-protected, so it can be taken on shallow dives into freshwater.

Motorola packs its phone in a black box made of recycled material, which is printed on with soy ink. Plastic is no longer used in its packaging materials.

Motorola already states the estimated production of CO2 equivalents for several of its smartphones, but despite lengthy research, we were unable to find the document specifically for the Edge 50 Ultra.

The manufacturer also lets you buy spare parts to repair its phones, which are available via selected partner companies in many countries. Unfortunately, these are often not available for all models—they are mostly only available for older smartphones and there is often only a limited selection of parts to choose from. On iFixit, you can find repair instructions for some (but also often older) Motorola cell phones. In the United States, Motorola also offers some service manuals via third-party providers, but again, this only applies to certain models. Overall, the manufacturer's range of spare parts and support for customer repairs seems very half-hearted.

Power consumption and the frequency and duration of software updates are also included in our sustainability rating, which we will discuss in the relevant sections. Motorola is taking good steps towards sustainability, but you don't get the feeling that the manufacturer is acting very consistently at the moment, and its approach seems to be different in every country.

The Motorola Edge 50 Ultra is equipped with the latest WLAN standard WiFi 7 (802.11 be). This supports 16 antennas in both transmitting and receiving directions and 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz bands can be used dynamically in a single standard. Above all, however, the phone's management of many simultaneously connected devices has been improved. Its maximum possible speed is theoretically 46 Gbit/s.

However, our test device only uses 2x2 antennas, so its speeds are significantly lower. Using our WiFi 6 router Asus ROG Rapture AXE 11000, we measured values between around 700 and 870 Mbps. This is not quite enough to really make use of a gigabit internet connection, but it is completely sufficient for fast downloads and streaming in 4K during everyday use. The speeds we measured weren't totally stable during the test.

Close to the router, we had access to the full signal and you could browse the web smoothly. 10 metres away and with 3 walls in between, 3/4 of the signal strength was still available and pages only loaded a tiny bit slower. 

The Snapdragon X70 cellular modem covers all important 4G and 5G frequencies, meaning the Edge 50 Ultra can be used worldwide. During our test, we repeatedly compared the mobile reception with other high-end phones at random in various locations and can attest to very good reception performance.

Motorola hasn't changed anything about the standard Android telephone app. If required, you can also download different apps from the Google Play Store.

If you call someone, then you can hear their voice quite clearly using the earpiece—but they sound a little distant. The user's voice is transmitted clearly and background noise is filtered out quite effectively.

If you would like to make a call using the phone's loudspeaker, then the person on the other end of the line also doesn't sound the most present, but you can understand them well. During our test, the microphone recorded our voice very precisely and transmitted it this way to the person we were speaking to.

The main camera additionally had to prove itself in our photo studio: At full brightness, text against a red background appeared slightly blurred at the edges but otherwise, the image appeared quite sharp across the entire photo and the colors looked good.

Even at only 1 lux of residual light, the smartphone camera was still able to make a lot visible, however, display errors occurred with fine text depending on the background color.

Unlike other smartphones, the Motorola Edge 50 Ultra comes with a large accessory package— and even with a hard plastic protective cover. Also included is a quick charger, USB cable and a SIM tool.

The warranty is 12 months as long as the smartphone was purchased within the United States.

You can additionally purchase MotoCare after buying the device, which is an accident cover lasting up to 3 years. However, you should also check out other insurance packages to make sure you get the most for your money. 

The manufacturer has been less sneaky when it comes to the phone's GPU: The installed Adreno 735 can't keep up with the Adreno 740 inside the Snapdragon 8 Gen2, so the performance it offers is lower than in the Edge 40 Pro. Again, you likely won't notice a big difference—as long as you don't run super demanding apps on the smartphone.

When surfing the web, the Edge 50 Ultra is extremely fast—pages are loaded quickly and images are usually already available when scrolling.

As expected from a current high-end phone, the Edge 50 Ultra comes with super fast storage, namely UFS 4.0 flash. As a result, it is on par with the competition and achieves very fast data transfers with only minimal loading times.

According to our measurements, the phone's case heats up quite noticeably after prolonged load: It reached up to 47.1 °C during our test—and that at room temperature. In warmer surroundings, it could get even hotter.

We also noted throttling of up to 35 % of the device's maximum performance after longer periods of load. Unfortunately, it seems there is hardly a high-end phone that is exempt from this problem at the moment.

The Motorola Edge Phone comes with stereo speakers, while the upper one is also used as an earpiece.

The device's sound is good but not outstanding and it could do with more low mids and perhaps even some high bass. Pop music sounds a little distant and not very powerful, and classical music has to be turned down a little—otherwise the violins in particular sound unpleasant. Vocals are easy to understand, but movie sound also lacks a little oomph.

Headphones or speakers can be connected via the USB-C port or Bluetooth. Almost all currently used codecs are available for the latter, including SBC, AAC, LDAC, all aptX variants, but also more exotic codecs such as Opus, LC3 or LHDC V2-5.

The Edge 50 Ultra deserves praise for its frugal power consumption: Neither in idle mode nor under high load does it require much energy. Although it doesn't quite come close to the great values of the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, it is definitely very efficient in its use of power.

The phone can be charged at up to 125 watts using a cable, which means the battery is fully charged in just under 40 minutes. However, it should be noted that the longevity of the battery can suffer with constant fast charging. As an antidote, you can use the battery-saving functions within the software if you want to use the smartphone for a longer period of time or charge it with a slower charger in between.

A wireless charging power of up to 50 watts is now supported, as is reverse wireless charging of other devices at up to 10 watts.

At 4,500 mAh, Motorola has installed a battery with a comparatively low capacity. Accordingly, its battery runtimes also aren't record-breaking: Although 15:53 hours of WLAN surfing in our test wasn't a disaster, it was still the weakest result among the comparison devices.

Still, the phone should be able to last a day of normal use without charging—or even two if used sparingly. If you like gaming or using the phone for other intensive activities, you will have to charge it again after just under 4 hours.

At the time of writing, the Motorola Edge 50 Ultra is not yet available to purchase in the United States.