Motorola Edge 30 Fusion review: Almost the best of both worlds

The Motorola Edge 30 Fusion, as its name suggests, attempts to marry the high-flying features of the Edge 30 Ultra with the affordability of the Edge 30 Neo, in an effort to create a powerful, yet budget-conscious mid-range handset. The end result is a mostly elegant mashup, with a striking display, solid battery life and competent, if unremarkable, performance for the price.

That performance keeps the Fusion from offering the same value as the Ultra does, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a failure. This is a mid-ranger through and through and it’s a significant middle child of the three new Moto devices. Sure, it never outshines the overachieving eldest, but I’d argue that it tries harder and achieves better grades than the ne’er-do-well baby of the family.

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Motorola Edge 30 Fusion review: What you need to know

While it falls closer in price to the Edge 30 Neo, the Fusion actually has a lot more in common with the Edge 30 Ultra. The OLED display is slightly smaller at 6.55in, but otherwise offers the same curved edges, FHD+ resolution and super-smooth 144Hz refresh rate. Internally, you’ve got a Snapdragon 888 Plus processor, backed by 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.

The rear camera module comprises a 50MP main lens, a 13MP ultrawide sensor and a 2MP macro shooter, with the 32MP selfie camera sitting in a central hole punch notch in the display. Handling the power is a 4,400mAh battery, which supports fast charging via the provided 68W charger, though wireless charging isn’t included here.

You can pretty much always rely on Motorola phones to implement a clean version of Android and the Edge 30 Fusion is no different. It runs Android 12 out of the box and Motorola has confirmed that it will receive four security updates and three software upgrades in its lifetime, bringing it all the way up to Android 15.

Motorola Edge 30 Fusion review: Price and competition

Despite being such a nice, round number, £500 is actually a bit of a ghost town when it comes to the smartphone market. Both the Xiaomi 12T and Honor 70 originally retailed in this price range (£499 and £480, respectively) but each has since seen regular enough discounts that they may as well be permanent price drops.

The Xiaomi 12T has a larger 108MP main camera, but falls behind on battery life, while the Honor has terrific battery life but isn’t quite as nippy. Slightly cheaper are the Apple iPhone SE 3 (£449) and Motorola’s own Moto G200 (£400). The iPhone has exceptional speeds but really stumbles with battery life, and the G200 performs well across the board but lacks the premium design of the Fusion.

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Motorola Edge 30 Fusion review: Design and key features

Ostensibly, the Edge 30 Fusion is available in a rainbow of colours, but as things stand right now, you can only buy two models, each of which offers a different finish. The Cosmic Grey has a fairly standard glass panel on the rear, but the Viva Magenta is coated in a layer of soft vegan leather.

Both variations have an aluminium frame, with Gorilla Glass 5 protection on the front and rear. The power button and volume rocker can be found on the right-hand side, while the bottom edge is home to the USB-C charging port, the SIM tray and one of the two stereo speakers, with the other situated on the top edge. Like the Edge 30 Ultra, the Fusion is only rated IP52 for weatherproofing, which is better than nothing, but still not as robust as something like the IP67-rated Google Pixel 6a.

The Edge name refers to the light notification system employed by both the Fusion and the Ultra, which illuminates around the display to alert you to calls, messages and alarms. An optical fingerprint sensor is located underneath the display and the selfie camera sits in a hole punch notch across the top of the screen. There’s no 3.5mm headphone jack, and the dual-SIM tray doesn’t accept microSD cards, either.

Motorola Edge 30 Fusion review: Display

The echoes of the Edge 30 Ultra’s design continue with the display, The Fusion’s 6.55in OLED panel has the same 2,400 x 1,080 (FHD+) resolution and HDR10+ support as its bigger sibling, and even gets to keep the super-smooth 144Hz refresh rate. Befitting an OLED panel, the contrast and black level are essentially perfect, and the peak brightness of 492cd/m2 is a little on the dim side, but is decent enough for the price.

In keeping with both the Neo and Ultra, there are two colour modes to choose from. Saturated does exactly what it says on the tin, dialling the colours up to 11, while Natural offers a more accurate, if slightly muted, palette. On the Natural setting, I recorded an sRGB gamut coverage of 97%, with a volume of 98.3%, which essentially means that the display reproduces a broad range of colours with terrific accuracy.

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Motorola Edge 30 Fusion review: Performance and battery life

At this price, the Fusion wasn’t likely to use the same high-end Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset that powers the Edge 30 Ultra, so the Snapdragon 888 Plus makes sense as the next best thing, considering the price difference. Even so, it isn’t exactly encouraging that the Fusion is using the same processor as the Motorola Moto G200 – a phone that came out over a year ago and retails for £100 less.

We see the results of this in the below Geekbench 5 chart, where the Moto G200 scored largely similar to the Edge 30 Fusion in both the single and multi-core CPU tests.

In fact, out of all the phones I tested it against, the Fusion only managed to pull ahead of the Honor 70, and even then not by any significant margin. There’s nothing wrong with middle-of-the-road results, but the cincher is that, barring the original retail prices of the Honor 70 and Xiaomi 12T, all of these phones are between £50 and £100 cheaper than the Fusion.

The Fusion at least manages to reclaim its honour when we move over to the GPU results, where it left the Moto G200 in the dust, only being beaten in the offscreen processing test by the near-untouchable results of the iPhone SE 3 (2022). While impressive, the iPhone’s power is shackled to a 60Hz refresh rate, so the Fusion’s 115 fps is still the best framerate of the selection. Pair it with the 144Hz refresh and the Fusion delivers a solid set of gaming credentials.

Both the Honor 70 and Xiaomi 12T refused to play ball with our GPU testing software, so we don’t have hard and fast comparison figures for either.

Turning to battery life, the Edge 30 Fusion is yet again middle of the pack, with a respectable score of 19hrs and 15mins. This is only a couple hours shorter than the Honor 70 and Moto G200 managed, and about an hour and a half longer than the Xiaomi 12T. Pulling up the rear is the iPhone SE 3, with less than 12 hours on the clock.

While it doesn’t get the ridiculously speedy fast charger used by the Edge 30 Ultra, the Fusion comes with the same 68W charger used by the Neo, and to my mind, this is fast enough that you won’t notice the difference. From empty, it will take the battery up to 50% in 12 minutes, and on to full in around 40 minutes.

Motorola Edge 30 Fusion review: Cameras

The 50MP (f/1.8) main camera is a fairly sizable downgrade from the massive 200MP lens used by the Edge 30 Ultra, and smaller even than the 64MP sensor on the Edge 30 Neo. Pixel count isn’t everything, however, and you can see in the image below that the Neo produces slightly washed-out images that lack finer details. The Ultra is still the best of the three, but the Fusion is decent enough, producing good contrast in the leaves and branches.

Neither the Neo nor the Ultra fared particularly well in low-light conditions, so it’s little surprise to see the Fusion following the same trend. The HDR mode manages to artificially brighten the scene enough to see what’s happening in the shadowy areas, but the amount of detail that comes through leaves a lot to be desired.

The lack of detail in low-light images at least didn’t get any worse when switching over to the ultrawide lens. For what it is, this sensor is effective enough, widening the shot without completely washing out the colour in the sign and the grass in the foreground.

The superfluous macro camera also falls into the decent enough category. The subject is generally in sharp focus, with an effective artificial blur added behind it, but the colours aren’t as vivid as I’d like them to be.

4K and 8K video recording are both carried over from the Edge 30 Ultra, but they’re both capped at 30fps. 1080p allows for up to 120fps, so you have the option to trade off resolution for a higher framerate. Whichever configuration you end up with, there’s plenty of detail in good lighting, and panning is relatively shake-free courtesy of some effective optical image stabilisation.

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Motorola Edge 30 Fusion review: Verdict

With the Edge 30 Ultra being such a pleasantly powerful surprise, there was always going to be a fairly long shadow cast over the other Edge devices. For the most part, the Fusion succeeds in escaping from that shadow and shining a light of its own. The display is still fantastic, with excellent colour reproduction and a generous 144Hz refresh rate, while battery life is decent and the 68W fast charging is good enough for most people as well.

You can definitely get equal or slightly better performance for less money, but you will end up sacrificing other areas to reach it, be it battery life, features or overall design appeal. In short, if your budget doesn’t stretch quite as far as the Ultra, the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion is a solid consolation prize, even if it does narrowly miss out on a recommendation.

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