Motorola Razr 50 review: Better, but still not there yet

With most of the competition either not yet available in the UK or avoiding our shores altogether, the Motorola Razr 50 is the de facto choice for a high-end yet relatively affordable folding phone. That doesn’t mean that it’s an easy sell, however.

I recently awarded the more expensive Motorola Razr 50 Ultra five stars and, when comparing it to the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6, named it the best compact foldable you can buy right now. In the shadow of such a successful sibling, the Motorola Razr 50 needs to offer serious value for money while still hitting the key appeal of a foldable phone – a balance that the Razr 40 struggled to achieve.

While not without wobbles along the way (performance threatens to send the whole thing tumbling into the safety net), the Razr 50 is definitely an improvement over last year’s model but there’s still some way to go before it’s a serious challenger to the high-end clamshells.

Motorola Razr 50 review: What you need to know

The most notable difference between the Razr 50 and the Razr 40 is that the latter’s puny 1.5in cover screen has been replaced with a full-size 3.6in AMOLED panel – the same size as last year’s Motorola Razr 40 Ultra. The specs aren’t quite as impressive but they’re still very competitive, with a 1,066 x 1,056 resolution and 90Hz refresh rate.

Open the phone and you’ll find a main display that’s almost identical to last year. It’s once again a 6.9in flexible AMOLED panel with the same 2,640 x 1,080 resolution and LTPO technology allowing for a dynamically adjusting refresh rate. The difference is that the Razr 40’s 144Hz peak refresh rate has been dialled back to 120Hz – still smooth as butter, but not overkill for the power of the phone.

Speaking of which, the Razr 50 runs on the new MediaTek Dimensity 7300X chipset, backed up by 8GB of RAM and 256GB of onboard storage space. The battery is the same 4,200mAh capacity as last year and once again supports 30W wired charging – though wireless charging has improved from 5W to 15W.

The only change to the camera suite is the main lens, which has dropped from a 64MP sensor to a 50MP one, but the aperture is still a wide f/1.7. Alongside it is the same 13MP (f/2.2) ultrawide shooter as last year, while tucked beneath the internal display is a 32MP (f/2.4) selfie camera.

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Motorola Razr 50 review: Price and competition

At £799, the Razr 50 is the same price as its predecessor, meaning that it undercuts the main flip phone competition by a couple of hundred pounds.

The next cheapest alternative is Motorola’s own Razr 50 Ultra, which costs £999. For the extra cash, you get a larger cover screen, a more powerful processor and a 2x telephoto camera instead of an ultrawide. The only other real competition is Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 6, which delivers blisteringly fast performance, solid cameras and longer software support, and starts at £1,049.

Otherwise, there’s plenty of competition from non-folding phones, with each of the top brands represented by an entry-level flagship around this price. The Samsung Galaxy S24, Google Pixel 8 and Apple iPhone 15 are all in this general ballpark and each has far superior performance and software support but lacks the appeal of the foldable format.

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Motorola Razr 50 review: Design and key features

At 74 x 15.9 x 88mm (WDH) when folded, the Razr 50’s dimensions are near-enough identical to its predecessor’s. Unfold it, however, and we see a couple of small changes: the phone is marginally taller at 171.3mm (up from 170.8mm) and it’s 0.1mm slimmer, at 7.3mm. The weight is very slightly lower too, now 188.4g, down from 188.6g.

New cover display aside, the design of the Razr 50 isn’t much different from the Razr 40: the edges are still rounded matte plastic and the rear is once again coated in vegan leather, which is this year available in Spritz Orange, Sand Beach and the Koala Grey reviewed here. The feel is a little different, however; I found the Razr 40’s coating to be a little too grippy for my liking, whereas this redesign removes a lot of the texture and leaves the rear feeling soft and smooth, which I much prefer.

Sitting over the cover display is a sheet of Gorilla Glass Victus for scratch protection and the new IPX8 rating certifies the phone as able to withstand a 1.5m dunk in fresh water for up to 30 minutes. There’s no official dust resistance but this is still a marked improvement over the Razr 40, which lacked an IP rating altogether.

The Razr 50 launches with Android 14 and has been promised three years of OS updates and four years of security patches. That’s not as extensive as the seven years of both that the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 is set to receive but it at least matches the Razr 50 Ultra’s roadmap. More of a concern is just how lethargic Motorola has been with updating its current batch of handsets to Android 14. If this pattern continues, it could well be that the Razr 50 won’t be the best way to get snappy updates in the future.

Motorola Razr 50 review: Displays

The external display is at least half the point of getting a folding phone, so I’m very glad to see the Razr 50 making huge strides here. Not only is the 3.6in cover screen a massive improvement over the Razr 40’s, it’s better specified than the much pricier Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6, too. That includes a sharper 1,066 x 1,056 resolution and a slightly smoother 90Hz refresh rate.

As with the Razr 50 Ultra, you can set pretty much any app you want to work on the cover screen, meaning you can do anything from browsing web pages to watching Netflix without opening the phone. You can even fully utilise Google’s Gemini AI assistant without ever having to open the phone, asking questions via text or talking and even taking photos to provide additional context.

The 6.9in main display impressed me, too, with the same 2,640 x 1,080 resolution as the Ultra model and an adaptable refresh rate that goes up to 120Hz. The crease over the hinge is near-enough invisible with the screen turned on and even running a finger over it, you can barely feel it’s there.

It’s a very strong panel, technically speaking, as well. The Vibrant and Radiant colour profiles are both punchy and perfect for streaming and gaming, while the Natural setting produced much better colour accuracy than either the Razr 50 Ultra or the Galaxy Z Flip 6, hitting a Delta E of just 1.31. Brightness surpassed the Ultra, too: I recorded a peak of 485cd/m2 in manual mode – more than 100 nits better than its pricier sibling – and it matched the Ultra on adaptive mode, hitting 1,128cd/m2 with a torch shining on the light sensor.

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Motorola Razr 50 review: Performance and battery life

While I’ve generally agreed with the cuts that Motorola has chosen to make with the Razr 50, the one area outside of the external display that desperately needed some attention was performance. Unfortunately, the new MediaTek Dimensity 7300X chipset performs similarly to last year’s Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 and is actually a bit worse in a couple of places.

As you can see below, the Razr 50 only just eked out an advantage over the Razr 40 in our Geekbench 6 test, pulling ahead by around 8% in the multi-core portion. Take a look at the non-folding phones here and you’ll see how much speed you’re sacrificing for the folding format.

Things are even more off in the GFXBench GPU stress test, with the Razr 50 delivering worse results than its predecessor. In fairness, I played Asphalt Legends Unite on both handsets, with the settings dialled way down, and gameplay felt roughly the same, but this is still a disappointing result for the Razr 50.

More concerning is how much the top half of the phone heated up while I played around with a few of the preinstalled games on the cover display. I can’t have been playing for more than ten minutes but the screen grew uncomfortably warm. This happened when playing on the main display, too, though it didn’t get as hot as it did when I was using the cover screen. Either way, the cooling system clearly needs some work.

More cut and dried is the battery life – simply put, it’s excellent. The Razr 50 lasted for 25hrs 21mins in our looping video test, which is not only the best result we’ve seen from any flip phone tested thus far, it’s also better than some non-folding flagships, like the Google Pixel 8 and Apple iPhone 15.

Motorola Razr 50 review: Cameras

Swapping out the Razr 40’s 64MP (f/1.7) main camera for a 50MP (f/1.7) unit was a risky move but after testing out the new lens, I don’t think it’s a dealbreaker. In good lighting, I captured vibrant and detailed images with impressive dynamic range. Highlights had a tendency to flare up whenever the sun shone directly on the camera, but otherwise, the Razr 50 isn’t definitely not a step down from last year’s model.

The night camera fixes the Razr 40’s tendency to bathe scenes in an unnatural yellow light but remains rather middling. The artificial brightening still isn’t particularly strong and the finer details in the masts pictured below are rather blurry.

The 13MP (f/2.2) ultrawide is a direct carry-over from the Razr 40 so, unsurprisingly, performs the same, effectively expanding the field of view to 120° without sacrificing too much detail at the outer edges. The only issue that cropped up was its uncanny habit of drastically warming up the tone of the image – compared to the main camera, it looks as though I’ve pasted a filter over the top.

Video is largely unchanged from last year, hitting 4K at 30fps or 1080p at 60fps, with electronic stabilisation keeping things relatively free from chop and sway. One interesting addition is the camcorder mode, which automatically starts recording if you bend the phone 90 degrees and hold it on its side, like an old-school camcorder. You still need to have the camera app open first, so it doesn’t save masses of time, but it’s a fun inclusion.

Motorola Razr 50 review: Verdict

The larger, more functional external display does a lot of the heavy lifting to improve the Razr 50’s appeal over the Razr 40. Not only is it just as useful as the Razr 50 Ultra’s cover screen – and a smidge better than the Galaxy Z Flip 6’s – it also looks much cleaner, giving the phone a more stylish aesthetic. Add in a brilliant main display and the best battery life on any flip phone, and there’s a lot here to like.

Unfortunately, not every issue I had with the Razr 40 gets that same level of attention; performance is still drastically lower than you can get from similarly priced non-folding phones, and while gaming is adequate, the heat management is inconsistent. If these are compromises you’re willing to accept, the Motorola Razr 50 is the best affordable flip phone you can buy right now – though, admittedly, it’s lacking serious competition for that title.