iQOO Neo 6 vs Motorola Edge 30: Which is the best premium mid-ranger between the two?

The premium mid-ranger segment has seen several launches from brands like Samsung, OnePlus, iQOO, etc. Most of them provide all the necessary specifications in terms of build and design, display, performance, camera, and battery life. Recently both the iQOO and Motorola have their new offerings in the market.

The Motorola Edge 30 (Review) is the newest offering from Motorola that brings in some very good specifications like a lightweight design that sets it apart from all the smartphones, a 144Hz pOLED display, a newer Snapdragon 778G+ chipset, and a good set of triple cameras, a 4020mAh battery with 33W fast charging. The thing that sets it apart is the Stock Android experience. 

The iQOO Neo 6 (Review), on the other hand, provides a good design, a 120Hz AMOLED display, a powerful Snapdragon 870 chipset which is one of the flagship chipsets from Qualcomm and this aims at good gaming and performance, a 4700mAh battery with massive 80W fast charging, and a good set of triple cameras. So which of them should you choose according to your requirement and which one of them is better?

Let’s find out in the full comparison.

In terms of design, both the iQOO Neo 6 and the Motorola Edge 30 sport a polycarbonate back instead of glass but materials are slightly different on both of them where Motorola has gone for a PMMA-acrylic glass finish which is a combination of both glass and plastic and on the other hand, the iQOO Neo 6 has proper polycarbonate back. 

Both of them have a matte finish at the back but the back of the Motorola Edge 30 does catch some fingerprints which is not the case with the iQOO Neo 6. The Motorola Edge 30 has a plain back without any gradient pattern whereas the iQOO Neo 6 has a rainbow hue if you consider the Cyber Rage color. Both of them have an IP52 rating on the back which makes them splashproof against water.

The camera module on both at the back where Motorola Edge 30 has a rectangular module, the iQOO Neo 6 has a larger square-shaped module with the nice NEO logo below it. In terms of weight distribution, the Motorola Edge 30 weighs around 155grams which makes it much lighter than the 193grams weight of the iQOO Neo 6. 

The Motorola Edge 30 is slimmer at 6.8mm compared to 8.5mm on the iQOO Neo 6. Around the sides, both smartphones have a polycarbonate frame that houses the volume buttons and the power button. At the bottom, both have a USB Type-C port, a primary microphone, a loudspeaker grille, and a dual SIM card slot. Neither of them has any microSD card slot for storage expansion nor there is a 3.5mm headphone jack present. 

On the top, there is a secondary noise-canceling microphone on both but the iQOO Neo 6 has an additional IR Blaster to control various devices. Both smartphones have a punch hole display on the front with minimum bezels to the sides. But the bottom bezel is slightly thicker on the iQOO Neo 6 compared to the Motorola Edge 30. 

Overall the build and design are good on both smartphones, but it all depends on personal preference which one you choose as both look good but still, they do miss out on a glass back which is slightly disappointing in this price segment.

iQOO Neo 6 vs Motorola Edge 30 Display:

Both smartphones have good displays with some differences. The iQOO Neo 6 sports a slightly larger 6.62-inches display compared to the 6.5-inches one on the Motorola Edge 30. Both of them have Full HD+(1080×1920 pixels) AMOLED panels but the Motorola Edge 30 has a slightly different pOLED panel that makes it lighter and also has slightly thinner bezels around the sides compared to the iQOO Neo 6. 

The color reproduction and viewing angles are very good on both displays. In terms of refresh rate, the Motorola Edge 30 has a 144Hz refresh rate which is slightly more than the 120Hz refresh rate on the iQOO Neo 6. However in all the daily tasks like web browsing, switching between applications, gaming, etc. there is no such difference between 144Hz and 120Hz as such. 

The Motorola Edge 30 gets one advantage when its refresh rate is set at Auto it dynamically switches between 60, 90, or 120Hz depending on the content in the display whereas the Auto-Switch option on the iQOO Neo 6 switches the refresh rate between 60Hz and 120Hz only. The Motorola Edge 30 has a slightly higher 532Hz touch sampling rate compared to the 360Hz touch sampling rate on the iQOO Neo 6. 

But the 360Hz touch sampling rate increases to 1000Hz while playing games. In terms of display brightness, the iQOO Neo 6 can achieve a peak brightness of around 1300nits compared to 950nits of peak brightness on the Motorola Edge 30. Both these displays have good visibility under direct sunlight though. You can also set the color temperature to a warmer or cooler tone in both displays. 

In terms of display protection, the iQOO Neo 6 has Schott Xensation glass compared to Gorilla Glass 3 on the Motorola Edge 30. As both of these are AMOLED panels, there is an optical in-display fingerprint scanner on both that work accurately but the iQOO Neo 6 has slightly better speed compared to the Motorola Edge 30.

Both these displays have support for HDR10 so you can stream HDR content on YouTube and also there is Widevine L1 so both these displays can stream HD content on OTT platforms but currently, there is support for HDR in Netflix on the iQOO Neo 6 whereas it is not present on the Motorola Edge 30 which will be fixed in a future software update.

Overall, both the displays are equally good but the one on the iQOO Neo 6 edges slightly ahead due to better brightness levels and also the fact that there is support for HDR on OTT platforms which is not the case with the Motorola Edge 30 as of now.

iQOO Neo 6 vs Motorola Edge 30 Performance:

In terms of performance, both these smartphones sport different chipsets where iQOO Neo 6 has the powerful Snapdragon 870 chipset, and the Motorola Edge 30, on the other hand, has the newer and more powerful Snapdragon 778G+ chipset. In terms of all tasks like web browsing, rendering videos, playing games, or switching between different applications, both feel very smooth and handle everything thrown at them. 

In heavy games like Call Of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc. both smartphones can run easily at their highest graphics settings but in BGMI, the iQOO Neo 6 can run at an Extreme frame rate with HDR graphics whereas the Motorola Edge 30 could run at Smooth graphics with Extreme frame rates. The gameplay is much smoother on the iQOO Neo 6 due to the instant touch sampling rate of 1000Hz. 

And also after long hours of gaming, the back of the iQOO Neo 6 does not feel warmer due to the dedicated cascade cooling system underneath whereas the back of the Motorola Edge 30 does feel slightly warmer. In terms of CPU throttling tests, the iQOO Neo 6 has a slightly better-sustained performance of around 80-85 percent compared to 70-75 percent on the Motorola Edge 30.

In benchmarks, the iQOO Neo 6 has much higher scores compared to the Motorola Edge 30. In terms of network connectivity, both these have support for good carrier aggregation but the Motorola Edge 30 holds an edge in terms of 5G connectivity as it has support for 13 bands of 5G compared to 4 bands of 5G on the iQOO Neo 6. 

The iQOO Neo 6 is available in two different variants – 8/12GB LPDDR4X RAM with 128/256GB storage with UFS 3.1 speeds whereas the Motorola Edge 30 has 6/8GB LPDDR5 RAM with 128GB storage with uMCP speeds. Overall, the performance is equally good on both smartphones but the iQOO Neo 6 has a better gaming experience and also you get a higher 256GB storage option which is not present on the Motorola Edge 30. 

iQOO Neo 6 vs Motorola Edge 30 Software:

The Motorola Edge 30 runs on the latest MyUX which is almost Stock Android with few customizations from Motorola whereas the iQOO Neo 6 runs on the FunTouchOS 12 both of which are based on Android 12 out of the box. Both of them provide a lot of customizations to icon shape and size, different wallpapers, themes, and styles for fingerprint animations, etc.

The one advantage that the Motorola Edge 30 holds over the iQOO Neo 6 is that it comes with no bloatware at all and there are no ads also compared to FunTouchOS 12 which has a lot of pre-installed applications but you can uninstall them easily. iQOO’s FunTouchOS provides a lot of features whereas, on the other hand, MyUX has a lot of gestures handy in daily tasks. 

In terms of software updates, both smartphones are assured to get another two major AndroidOS and three years of security updates. Overall, it all depends on personal preference which user interface is the better one but considering the no bloatware or ads, the MyUX on the Motorola Edge 30 has a slight edge over the FunTouchOS on the iQOO Neo 6.

Both the smartphones have a triple camera setup where the iQOO Neo 6 has a 64MP f/1.8 Samsung GW1P sensor for the main camera, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera, and a 2MP macro camera, the Motorola Edge 30, on the other hand, has a 50MP f/1.8 Samsung JN1 sensor for the main camera, a 50MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera, and a 2MP depth sensor.

On the front, the iQOO Neo 6 has a 16MP f/2.0 camera whereas the Motorola Edge 30 gets a larger 32MP f/2.5 camera. 

The images from both the cameras come out with good details and the dynamic range is equally good on both but the level of details looks slightly sharper on the iQOO Neo 6 compared to the Motorola Edge 30. In terms of color reproduction, the images of the Motorola Edge 30 have natural colors whereas iQOO Neo 6 tends to oversaturate colors slightly.

With HDR mode turned on. both smartphones take good images with saturated colors. There is quite some noise in the background of the images taken by the Motorola Edge 30 compared to the iQOO Neo 6. With 2x digital zoom, the images from both cameras come out with good details but here also the iQOO Neo 6 has slightly better contrast and less noise but by a slight margin.

Moving to the ultrawide camera, here definitely the larger 50MP camera of the Motorola Edge 30 has a clear edge over the 8MP one on the iQOO Neo 6 in terms of details and dynamic range. The 50MP ultrawide camera does not have many distortions around the edges compared to the 8MP one on the iQOO Neo 6. The color saturation is slightly better on the iQOO Neo 6 though.

Motorola Edge 30, on the other hand, has slightly washed out colors even on its ultrawide camera but it does have sharp details of the two. At night, the ultrawide camera of the Motorola Edge 30 has better details whereas the dynamic range is equally good on both ultrawide cameras. However, there is a considerable amount of noise present in the images taken from the ultrawide camera during the night.

Both also get a dedicated night mode for the ultrawide camera which improves the dynamic range and also details look slightly sharper on both. The ultrawide camera on the Motorola Edge 30 also doubles up as a macro camera so as a result, the level of details looks sharper and you can go much closer to the subject compared to the 2MP macro camera on the iQOO Neo 6.

The 2MP macro camera on the iQOO Neo 6 takes images with washed-out colors with a larger amount of noise in the images. The macro images taken by the Motorola Edge 30 have much better details with good color reproduction. In terms of portraits, both the main cameras take images with good edge detection and proper background blur but the details look slightly better on the iQOO Neo 6 of the two.

On the front, the selfies on both smartphones come out with a good level of detail and the dynamic range is equally good on both but it is slightly better on the iQOO Neo 6 of two. The level of noise is slightly lower on the iQOO Neo 6 and the contrast is also better compared to the Motorola Edge 30. In terms of selfie portraits, the edge detection is good on both but Motorola Edge 30 tends to crop a lot.

In terms of videos, both smartphones can record 4K videos at 30fps but the iQOO Neo 6 can record 4K videos at 60fps, and videos come out equally good on both cameras in terms of details and dynamic range. The iQOO Neo 6 video footage has a slightly better dynamic range and colors look oversaturated slightly compared to the Motorola Edge 30 but the level of noise is low on both of them as they do have OIS.

Switching to 1080p at 60fps on the main camera, the videos come out good on both smartphones with excellent dynamic range and level of details but in terms of videos from the ultrawide camera, the Motorola Edge 30 has slightly sharper details and less noise compared to the iQOO Neo 6 but the latter one has better dynamic range and color saturation is also better compared to the Motorola Edge 30.

On the front, the Motorola Edge 30 holds a clear advantage as it can record 4K videos at 30fps compared to 1080p videos at 60fps. The videos from the front camera come out with better details and dynamic range on the iQOO Neo 6 compared to the Motorola Edge 30 which tends to crop in a lot to reduce noise and contrast is not as good as the iQOO Neo 6. 

So overall, in terms of cameras, the iQOO Neo 6 is slightly better compared to the Motorola Edge 30 where Motorola needs to work more on image processing.

The iQOO Neo 6 sports a larger 4700mAh battery compared to the 4020mAh battery on the Motorola Edge 30. In terms of normal usage which includes web browsing, streaming social media, calling, and taking images and videos, both smartphones easily lasted for two days with the display set to their highest refresh rates. 

When it comes to heavy usage like playing games like BGMI for 3-4 hours, rendering videos, and also taking videos using the camera, both smartphones lasted easily for one day with some charge left. The standard screen-on time on the iQOO Neo 6 was around 7-7.5 hours which is slightly better than the 6-7 hours on the Motorola Edge 30.

However, still, the battery life is very good on the Motorola Edge 30 though having a very smaller battery size and this is especially due to the good optimizations by Stock Android. In terms of charging, the iQOO Neo 6 holds the edge as it gets an 80W fast charger compared to a 33W fast charger that is present on the Motorola Edge 30.

In terms of charging speeds, the iQOO Neo 6 takes around 40 minutes to charge from 0 to 100 percent completely whereas the Motorola Edge 30 takes around 0 to 100 percent in 1 hour and 30 minutes which seems quite slow compared to the iQOO Neo 6. So clearly, in terms of battery life and charging speeds, the iQOO Neo 6 holds the edge over the Motorola Edge 30.

Both smartphones have a dual stereo speaker setup that sounds adequately loud and clear but the bass level and loudness levels on the Motorola Edge 30 are slightly more and better than the iQOO Neo 6. At the highest volume settings, the back of the Motorola Edge 30 vibrates a lot. Both do not have a 3.5mm headphone jack but iQOO Neo 6 does provide a 3.5mm to USB Type-C converter inside the box.

Both these smartphones are very good offerings in the premium mid-range segment as they bring in some good specifications like higher refresh rate displays, powerful chipsets, good cameras, and battery life but there are certain differences. In terms of build and design, both of them have different finishes at the back but still lack a glass back.

The display on both of them is good for media consumption, and performance in daily tasks is good on both but when it comes to heavy tasks which include gaming, the iQOO Neo 6 holds the clear edge, and also when it comes to cameras, the iQOO Neo 6 has the better cameras of the two. In battery life, the iQOO Neo 6 is better and also comes with faster-charging speeds.

But the software experience is not so refined as there is a considerable amount of bloatware present. On the other hand, the Motorola Edge 30 holds the edge in terms of software as it does not come with bloatware or ads and also has more 5G bands compared to the iQOO Neo 6. However, where it does have a good camera setup but the image processing and color saturation need improvement. 

On an overall basis, the Motorola Edge 30 is a good smartphone for those who want Stock Android with good specifications. But in almost all other aspects whether it is cameras, performance, or battery life, the iQOO Neo 6 has the clear edge over the Motorola Edge 30 and comes out to be the better pick of the two.