[jasomill]

The 50g screen has only slightly (131×80 vs 131×64) higher resolution than the 48G series, but it has vastly better contrast, and, thanks to improved fonts and other UI improvements, the built-in software on the 50g also makes significantly better use of the limited screen real estate.

N.B.: Meta Kernel[1] provides many of the 50g UI improvements on the 48GX — 49g/50g OS is based on Meta Kernel — but installing Meta Kernel in RAM requires a memory expansion card that, at current used prices, costs nearly as much as a used 50g (plus a steady [semi-yearly IIRC] supply of CR2016 coin cells to sustain the RAM card when the calculator is powered off).

While I also prefer the aesthetics and keyboard layout of the 48 series, the 50g with its bundled software suite stands as one of the most hacker-friendly handheld computing devices of all time: while documentation and development tools for the 48 series were widely available, it wasn't until the 49g that self-hosted versions of these tools (System RPL (de)?compiler, Saturn (dis)?assembler, library creation and extraction tools) were bundled with the base OS.

[1] https://www.hpcalc.org/details/213