Motorola Edge 40 Neo Review
The Edge 40 Neo is a rare all-rounder that stands out in the budget market.
Verdict
The budget-focused Motorola Edge 40 Neo feels anything but, with a slew of premium features including IP68 water resistance, a 6.5-inch curved 144Hz display, 68W fast charging and truly stunning colourways that make it one for serious consideration.
Pros
- Thin, lightweight design
- All-day battery life
- Premium hardware despite the price
Cons
- Mushy, inaccurate vibration motor
- Some pre-installed bloatware
Key Features
- Stunning Pantone colourwaysMotorola continues its partnership with colour experts Pantone with the Edge 40 Neo, available in three Pantone-verified (and exclusive) colourways that stand out from the crowd.
- Rapid fast chargingWith 68W fast charging and a charger included in the box, you can get 50% charge in just 17 minutes.
- Impressive water resistanceThe Motorola Edge 40 Neo is one of very few budget-focused phones offering full IP68 dust and water resistance.
Introduction
Motorola has had a strong year in the smartphone world with the likes of the Edge 40 and its foldable Razr 40 Ultra. This trend looks to continue with the Motorola Edge 40 Neo.
Despite its affordable £299 price tag, the Edge 40 Neo comes with a slew of features you’d expect from flagship-tier smartphones. Those include full IP68 water resistance, a curved 6.5-inch 144Hz pOLED display, rapid 68W fast charging and stunning Pantone-verified colourways that help it stand out from the crowd.
This culminates in a smartphone that doesn’t look, feel or perform like a budget phone should. In fact, we could be looking at the new choice for a budget-focused smartphone.
Design
- Stylish design with Pantone colourways
- IP68 dust and water resistance
- 6.5-inch 144Hz pOLED display
The Motorola Edge 40 Neo is a refinement of last year’s Edge 30 Neo with a slightly tweaked, though still recognisable, design. It’s a gorgeous smartphone with rounded edges and a curved display that makes it look way more premium than its budget price tag suggests, along with an upgraded vegan leather rear that feels exquisite in the hand.
At 7.76mm thick and 172g, the Neo is comfortably in lightweight territory compared to heavy smartphones like the iPhone 14 Pro Max, making it a pleasure to hold and use one-handed.
The heart of the Edge 40 Neo’s design focuses on Motorola’s partnership with colour experts Pantone. This year, that comes in the form of three Pantone-certified finishes dubbed Black Beauty, Soothing Sea and Caneel Bay, with the latter two sporting the vegan leather finish.
The Caneel Bay finish is a favourite of mine, with an absolutely stunning deep shade of blue that immediately stands out from the crowd. Each phone comes with a 100% recycled case in the same Pantone-certified colour. There’s even a little Pantone logo on the rear.
The Motorola Edge 40 Neo also excels in the water resistance department. In fact, with full IP68 dust and water resistance usually reserved for flagship-level devices, the Edge 40 Neo offers some of the best protection in the budget end of the market. Some devices, like the Google Pixel 7a, come close with IP67 resistance, but it’s rare to see full IP68 at such a low price.
Sustainability is also important for Motorola, not only in the form of its 100% recycled cases but even in the packaging the phone comes in. It’s all made from cardboard, meaning it’s all recyclable, with not one piece of single-use plastic found within.
It’s also one of the best-smelling boxes around. That might sound odd, but Motorola sprays a unique fragrance in the packaging of Motorola phones that makes the unboxing experience feel (and smell) even fancier.
Screen
- 6.5-inch curved pOLED display
- 144Hz refresh rate
- HDR10+ and Dolby Atmos support
That premium-on-a-budget trend continues with the display, which has seen an increase from 6.28 to 6.5 inches this year, and unlike its predecessor, it’s a curved display that wraps around the edges of the phone. It certainly helps the phone feel more premium, though whether you’re a fan of curved displays or not is likely down to personal preference.
At a rapid 144Hz, the screen is not only faster than its predecessor but much of the 120Hz Android competition. It’s arguably much of a muchness once you pass the 120Hz mark, but it translates to even higher framerates when gaming.
The catch? You can only select a constant 144Hz refresh rate, with the dynamic options capped at 120Hz. This means you’ll need to choose between exceedingly high refresh rates and decent battery life, and for pretty much everyone except mobile gamers, it’ll likely be the latter.
Elsewhere, the FHD+ pOLED panel boasts impressive specs including 10-bit colour, HDR10+ and Dolby Atmos support that delivers a top-notch movie-watching experience, with detailed and vivid playback that made particularly vibrant series’ like David Attenborough’s Life in Colour look exceptional.
Essentially, if you’re a fan of watching movies on the go, you’ll love what the Edge 40 Neo has to offer.
Cameras
- 50MP Ultra Pixel primary camera
- 13MP ultrawide and 32MP selfie camera
- Great low-light performance for the price
The star of the show has to be the primary 50MP ultra-pixel camera on the rear. Though it’s a downgrade on paper from the 64MP shooter of the Edge 30 Neo, there’s far more to camera tech than megapixel count, and the Edge 40 Neo looks to prove that.
For one, it has a larger sensor than its predecessor to capture much more light and detail, and with OIS, both photos and videos are pin-sharp. That essentially means that it can punch above its weight in terms of camera performance, with visuals that are pretty damn impressive for a budget phone.
The Edge 40 Neo was my phone of choice during a recent trip to Berlin, and it captured the essence of the trip perfectly. Images are detailed and vibrant with great dynamic range capturing both bright skies and the shadows of buildings without one overpowering the other. It’s a simple point-and-shoot experience made simpler by OIS and PDAF autofocus tech.
That’s expected from most smartphone cameras in 2023 – it’s not difficult to get a good shot in well-lit conditions – however the same can’t be said for low-light. That’s when budget cameras begin to falter with smaller apertures and sensors than their flagship brethren.
But that’s why the Edge 40 Neo is so interesting; it’s actually pretty decent in low light.
That’s down to the larger pixels of the main camera, allowing the phone to capture more light and at much faster speeds – up to 16x, according to Motorola. Though I found it’d still take a couple of seconds to capture in low-light conditions, the results were largely worth it.
As you can see from the above night shots I took on my trip to Berlin, the phone does a great job of not only capturing plenty of light, but there’s plenty of detail and, rather impressively, no blur in moving subjects.
It can occasionally struggle with colour temperature, with overly orange results, but this is easily fixed with a bit of editing in the Photos app. It’s not quite at Pixel 7a levels, then, but it’s not that far off.
Elsewhere, there’s a 13MP ultrawide camera on the rear to help capture those group shots or scenic vistas. It does a great job at capturing as much of the scene as possible with a 120-degree field of view, and there’s little edge distortion, but images aren’t quite as detailed as what you’ll get from that main sensor.
Flip the phone over and you’ll find a high-res 32MP selfie camera with quad-pixel tech that more than suffices for casual selfies and video calls.
It can’t quite reach the lofty heights of 4K@60fps or even 8K@24fps, but the 4K@30fps video is more than enough for capturing the moment, and thanks to OIS, it’s relatively shake-free too.
Performance
- Dimensity 7030 chipset
- Ample 12GB of RAM
- Surprisingly smooth performance
At the heart of the Motorola Edge 40 Neo is MediaTek’s mid-range Dimensity 7030, coupled with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage as standard – an impressive combination for the price tag.
While you shouldn’t expect the same performance as you’d get from the flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, the phone is surprisingly capable at everyday tasks with no real signs of stutter or lag when scrolling through ad-laden websites or media-packed X timelines.
The only time I noticed any kind of slow-down was shortly after setting the phone up – but in all fairness, it was installing 90+ apps at the time. Once that was out of the way, the responsive performance resumed.
It’s a similar story when it comes to graphics performance with a surprisingly decent experience on offer, handling basic titles like Survivor.io without breaking a sweat, and it can run 3D games like Call of Duty Mobile fairly smoothly as long as the graphics aren’t cranked too high. It stays surprisingly cool under load too, with no noticeable warm spots on the rear after 30 minutes of gaming.
That’s backed up by benchmark results too, with the Motorola Edge 40 Neo destroying the £300 competition with results similar to what you’ll find from the £449 Google Pixel 7a and Samsung Galaxy A54 5G. It truly punches above its weight.
In fact, one of the few annoyances I’ve had with the Edge 40 Neo has nothing to do with core performance, but the performance of the vibration motor – and that should say a lot.
It’s the one element that quickly signals the phone’s budget focus with mushy, inaccurate vibration feedback. It got so bad that I had to disable the vibration when typing as it quickly blended into a constant vibration. However, disabling it basically fixed the issue, so it’s nowhere near a dealbreaker.
Elsewhere, you’ll find stereo speaker support as well as support for Dolby Atmos, with the latter delivering a semi-spatial experience when watching supported content with headphones.
Software
- Near-stock Android 13
- Handy Motorola tweaks
- Some pre-installed bloatware
The Edge 40 Neo experience is powered by near-stock Android 13 that’d please most Android puritans, with only a handful of Moto tweaks on offer – and where things are different, it’s generally for the better.
That ranges from Moto Actions that allow you to do a karate chop with the phone to toggle on the flashlight to more advanced functionality like Motorola ReadyFor and Moto Secure.
ReadyFor delivers some of the best Windows 10/11 integration of any phone manufacturer in 2023, with the ability to get notifications, use Android apps and even use the Edge 40 Neo’s camera as a webcam, further expanding just how useful the phone can be in everyday use.
There is a little bit of bloatware, but these come in the form of apps I’d have likely downloaded anyway – TikTok, Facebook and LinkedIn – along with a couple of outliers like Booking.com. It’s certainly far from what you’ll find from cheap Xiaomi or Honor smartphones that come with literal folders full of pre-installed apps and games, and you can uninstall anything that comes pre-installed on the smartphone if you hate it.
Lastly, the software promise of three years of OS upgrades and security patches should see the phone through to Android 16, allowing users to continually get new features and updates that’ll keep the phone useful for longer periods of time. It’s not the 7 years you’d get from the Google Pixel 8, but it’s certainly competitive for the budget space where plenty of phones don’t get a single OS upgrade.
Battery life
- 5000mAh battery
- All-day battery life
- 68W charger included in the box
Battery life is another area where the Edge 40 Neo shines with a large 5000mAh cell powering the experience. That’s an increase of 920mAh compared to last year’s Edge 30 Neo that we had no complaints about, and even with a faster 144Hz display, it’s very much the case here too.
There’s no better example of the Edge 40 Neo’s battery longevity than my recent trip to Berlin. The phone was unplugged bright and early at 4:30am, and after a very long day catching a flight, travelling around Berlin, attending a phone launch and going to dinner, it reached the end of the day at just after midnight with 15% remaining.
That’s with constant use throughout the day, be it chatting on WhatsApp or snapping photo samples for this review, with around 5 hours of screen-on time. I’m sure that true power users will drain it faster, but for most people, it’ll be more than enough for daily use.
It also sports speedy 68W fast charging tech and, despite the £299 price tag, comes with a 68W fast charger in the box. That’s enough to deliver 50% charge in 17 minutes in my experience, though a full charge takes a slightly longer (but still relatively fast) 50 minutes.
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Final Thoughts
If Motorola set out to disrupt the budget market with the Edge 40 Neo, it has succeeded with flying colours. It’s incredibly well specced for its £299 price tag with a 6.5-inch curved 144Hz pOLED display, IP68 water resistance and 68W fast charging with a brick included in the box.
The camera setup, and the main 50MP sensor in particular, performs well considering its price point, capturing not only detailed, vibrant images in well-lit conditions but in low-light scenarios too. It’s not quite up to the level of flagships or even the mid-range Pixel 7a, but it’s one of the better implementations in the budget phone market.
Performance is also surprisingly solid from the Dimensity 7030 chipset, likely aided by the plentiful 12GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage should be ample for most budget users.
It’s also one of the more unique options on the market thanks to Motorola’s partnership with Pantone, allowing for some truly stunning colourways. Paired with a vegan leather rear and a curved display, it doesn’t look or feel like a budget-focused smartphone.
Seriously, what more could you want for £299?
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FAQs
There is a charger in the box, and a 68W charger at that.
It offers full IP68 water resistance, allowing it to be submerged in up to 1m of water for up to 30 minutes.
Motorola Edge 40 Neo benchmark results
Full specs
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
