If the Edge 30 Neo has seen investment in its screen and general design, an area of clear sacrifice has been its performance. This is no great surprise given the Fusion has a flagship-tier chipset, while the Neo has a much less impressive mid-tier one. The same disparities hold true when we look at GPU performance. The Poco F4 pulling leagues ahead makes sense, as it is the most expensive of the four, but the Nord’s lead of nearly 30% over the Neo in the off-screen benchmark continues to paint a fairly negative picture. Rounding out the camera suite is an adequate portrait mode, establishing a decent enough outline around the subject but struggling with fine hair. While rivals such as the Poco F4 offer 4K at 60fps, video capture here is limited to 1080p at 60fps and slow-mo footage at 120fps. The quality is decent enough, but the stabilisation is only compatible with the 30fps setting, and even then there was noticeable shaking. Motorola Edge 30 Neo review: Verdict

Fast charging might be. The Motorola Edge 30 Neo includes a 68W charger and, unlike some of the 80W phones we’ve used recently, it does actually hit that rated charge power.Results aren’t bad either. The Motorola Edge 30 Neo avoids the obviously oversaturated color you’ll often see in aggressively priced rivals from companies like Realme. Though it may be smaller, and cheaper, than its kin, it has a 1080p OLED display, a 50MP camera, a powerful processor and an interesting design to boot – so it is hardly a poor cousin. This said, at the price of entry it finds itself up against a host of powerful players, each offering options that blend a similar set of specs, though all of them are larger. This phone features fast charge technology - faster than standard charging, for when time is of the essence. In the present, the Motorola Edge 30 Neo is a ‘small’ phone, though with a screen of over 6 inches it is still gargantuan by the standards of a decade ago. It is positioned against its more premium brethren, the Ultra and the Fusion, as a more utilitarian, everyman option though it does come with an interesting sheet of specifications.

This wouldn’t matter so much if we were just making a comparison between the Neo and the Fusion, but you can get Fusion-like results from phones such as the OnePlus Nord 2T and the Pixel 6a. Just within the Motorola Edge range you’ve got five models: the Edge 30 and Edge 30 Pro, now joined by the Edge 30 Fusion, Edge 30 Ultra and this Edge 30 Neo, which is the lightweight of the bunch in terms of price and features. Motorola is really expecting a lot of people when it comes to determining the best phone for their needs, considering rivals like Google’s Pixel range offer a fairly simple choice between Lite, Standard and Pro.The question then, as it has ever been, is: does a smaller form factor do enough to distinguish the Neo, both from more premium members of the same device line and the competition? Design and screen This is helped along by an effective HDR mode, which you can see in the image below adding greater contrast to the branches and hedgerows without washing out the cloudy sky. It does, however, come at the expense of definition in the finer details of the leaves, with the colours somewhat smudging together.

The standard Edge 30’s zoom shots are also considerably sharper, if perhaps a little over-processed. Despite the Neo’s larger pixels, the low-light performance is significantly worse than the standard Edge 30. Connect at 5G speed without worrying about battery life on a 4020 mAh battery. Get power for the day in just 10 minutes with 68 W TurboPower charging. Avoid messy cables and cords with wireless charging. Video is probably the weakest area of the Motorola Edge 30 Neo's camera. You can only shoot at 1080p, at 30fps or 60fps, and clips look pretty awful in either mode. Stabilization is poor, overexposure is common, and the image appears soft, low on detail and, at times, pixelated due to poor handling of objects with hard edges.Battery life, at least, sees the Edge 30 Neo put in a good performance, lasting over 21 hours in our video rundown test. The Nord CE 2 5G continues to outshine the competition, reaching beyond 24 hours, but neither of the Xiaomi models made it over 20 hours, so the Neo is still sitting pretty here.

It goes some way to making the Motorola Edge 30 Neo feel less like a 'vanilla' Android phone than other Motos, but if you don’t like it you can change it with a few screen taps and presses. And Motorola has otherwise not changed the classic Moto interface much here. The hardware situation improves in the camera, at least superficially. Motorola only put two cameras on the Edge 30 Neo, but that simply means we miss out on the poor depth or macro sensors commonly seen in this price category.There aren't many compact phones to choose from, especially in the mid-range class, so the Neo is a breath of fresh air of sorts. And it's also running quite capable hardware. The 6.28-inch, 120Hz OLED display is not only fast but bright as well. Memory configurations start at 6GB/128GB, the main camera is 64MP with OIS, and the secondary ultrawide camera uses a much-appreciated 13MP sensor instead of the overused and underwhelming 8MP one. The Motorola Edge 30 Neo's design may seem better from afar than in your hand, but the screen is an unexpected smash. It’s a petite 6.28-inch P-OLED panel with class-leading outdoor visibility. There are caveats attached to smaller, thinner, phones that might not be expected. Of course, a smaller screen and general footprint will mean reduced battery life and slightly worse viewing experience with video, but there are consequences for the camera too. Once depleted, the 68W fast charger can take the battery to 50% in around 12 minutes, and on to full in less than 40 minutes. This is pretty much identical to both the OnePlus Nord CE 2 5G and the Xiaomi Poco F4, and just a hair faster than the Xiaomi Redmi Note 11. On a more positive note, the Motorola Edge 30 Neo’s 13MP ultra-wide is miles better than some of the 8MP cameras seen in some comparable mid-tier Androids. There’s less distortion at the corners of the frame and its images don’t immediately look compromised as soon as you zoom in a bit.