Motorola Edge 40 Neo review: The budget powerhouse that oozes luxury

Motoroal Edge 40 Neo (Image - Motorola)

Motorola has been launching some exciting budget smartphones this year, and the Edge 40 Neo, the younger sibling of the earlier lunched Edge 40, has created quite a buzz in the market, with the product showing sold out in most online channels. I got to use the phone as a daily driver for a month now, including a short trip to the historic city of Murshidabad, and here are my thoughts.

Design and in-hand feel

The Motorola Edge 40 Neo is similar to its elder brother barring two areas – instead of a metal frame it gets a plastic one and skips wireless charging.
I was using the Caneel Bay colour variant of the Edge 40 Neo, which is a sparkling turquoise-blue shade certified by Pantone, the globally renowned colour authority company.

I loved the colour, and the vegan leather back further accentuated the look – it is matte, non-slippery and sturdy, which allows usage without a case if you don’t care for the bright colour to catch some dirt. The variant’s 159.63 mm length, 7.89 mm thickness, 71.99 mm width and 172 gm weight and felt incredibly light and easy to hold for one-handed usage.

Daylight image of the iconic Hazarduari Palace in Murshidabad, taken on the Motorola Edge 40 Neo (Image - Moneycontrol)

Display

The Edge 40 Neo comes with a 6.55 inch, curved pOLED display, something amazing at this price range. The phone offers full-HD resolution, 144 Hz refresh rate and 1,300 nits of peak brightness. The display has very thin bezels with symmetrical looks on all sides, looking sharp and crisp with good outdoor visibility, but I was hoping for a higher peak brightness.

Viewing multimedia content was pleasurable, and OTT apps look vivid on the phone, as it supports Widevine L1 and is HDR-10+ capable, while the dual-speaker setup was excellent with good clarity.

It was unclear if the phone’s display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3 or NEG glass, I did not face any issues of scratches and used the phone comfortably without any screen guard.

Outdoor daylight image taken on the Motorola Edge 40 Neo (Image - Moneycontrol)

Performance

Powering the Edge 40 Neo is the new, octa-core MediaTek Dimensity 7030, a 6nm processor. In fact, this is the first phone to run on this chip. My review unit came with 12GB LPDDR4X RAM and 256 GB internal memory with UFS 2.2 storage speed.

The phone felt quite snappy in day-to-day usage with almost no lags or jitters, including app opening/closing and keeping apps in the background. However, the phone did get warm during intensive tasks and playing games. I only got one software update with September security patch even in November, while Motorola promises two OS updates and three years of security patch updates. Software updates have been a problem point with Motorola and I hope they quickly improve on that.

Outdoor night image taken on the Motorola Edge 40 Neo under artificial lighting conditions (Image - Moneycontrol)

When it comes to gaming, the Edge 40 Neo is no slouch. You can easily play high end games on the phone such as BGMI, Call of Duty or Genshin Impact at high setting. The phone doesn't overheat and stayed relatively stable while gaming.

Camera

For optics, the Edge 40 Neo packs a dual-camera setup in the rear, the primary camera being a 50-MP shooter with a f/1.8 aperture, optical image stabilization (OIS) and Ultra Pixel technology, which Motorola claims it instantly adjusts to low-light settings to allow more light. The second camera is a 13-MP sensor that’s an ultra-wide shooter with electronic image stabilisation (EIS) and autofocus. Kudos to Motorola for not including gimmicky 2-MP useless cameras in order to bump up camera specs. The front camera is 32-MP.

Outdoor night image taken on the Motorola Edge 40 Neo under artificial lighting conditions (Image - Moneycontrol)

Motorola phones usually lagged when it came to its cameras, but seems like the company is slowly catching up. Pictures taken on the Edge 40 Neo look sharp, vibrant but with slightly boosted in normal conditions with improvements in portraits. However, edge detection needs to improve further, and picture quality could have been better in night mode. I also didn’t like that the phone takes a few seconds extra than normal to process final images and sometimes ends up oversaturating the images, which should be looked into.

Outdoor daylight image taken in portrait mode at Jagat Seth's house and Museum, Murshidabad. (Image - Moneycontrol)

In the video department, front and back camera both allow 4K at 30FPS, which is a rarity in this segment. The phone offers some nifty features such as portrait video mode where you can blur front and backgrounds, and low light mode where it automatically detects low light to adjust accordingly. It also has horizon lock, HDR video and audio zoom facilities. Video stabilization and quality also performed well, but as said earlier, night video clarity has room for improvements.

Battery

The Moto Edge 40 Neo comes with a 5000mAh battery, better than the 4,400mAh found on the higher-end Motorola Edge 40. The battery should easily last a day with normal usage, as the MediaTek Dimensity 9000 sips battery and is well optimized to preserve battery.

Since I am not an avid gamer, I was able to easily get by the day with one single charge in the morning with some casual browsing for 1-2 hours, multiple emails, watching multimedia and taking pictures. However, if used by intensive gamers, the battery will not last for a full day. Motorola also bundles an 89-watt Turbocharger that charges the phone fairly quickly, taking a little over an hour from 2-3 percent to 100 percent.

Inside Murshidabad's iconic Katra Masjid in outdoor evening light, under ultrawide mode (Image - Moneycontrol)

Software

On the software front, the Moto Edge 40 Neo boots Android 13-based MY UX. The OS is near stock-Android without any bloatware, barring some nifty Moto apps that offer increased security options such as Thinkshield and PIN scrambler. The OS seems fast and snappy with almost no lags throughout my entire usage, with excellent 5G network reception.

Portrait image taken on the Motorola Edge 40 Neo sometimes misses colour accuracy (Image - Moneycontrol)

The phone supports dual-5G with Wi-Fi calling, Bluetooth 5.3, NFC and Wi-Fi 6 and I almost never faced any issues with internet speeds. I tested the device with Jio and Airtel SIMs, and while 5G network reception and call clarity was excellent – both indoors and outdoors – I felt the microphone volume felt slightly low during some calls.

Verdict

Overall, the Moto Edge 40 Neo gets all the bells and whistles from its elder sibling Moto Edge 40, and is packed with features that are considered a steal in this price segment – excellent looks, curved screen, punchy and sharp display with AMOLED display and 144 hz display, NFC, superb dual speakers, IP68-rating, improved functionalities in the video segment and a processor that doesn’t overheat. Whichever features it misses can’t be considered a deal breaker, keeping the stellar pricing of the phone in mind.

However, that doesn’t mean the phone is without any misses – oversaturated photos taken on the camera and video stabilization still need some work, while Motorola’s software update policy needs to be more regularized. The curved screen also leads to accidental touches in some instances and needs some polishing.