Motorola Edge 40 Neo smartphone review: just a beauty

The entire current line of Motorola Edge 40 smartphones turned out to be extremely interesting and quite successful. Speaking directly about the Motorola Edge 40 Neo, it is a good representative of the mid-range price range, which has a number of undeniable advantages. Among them are an excellent OLED display with high brightness and 144 Hz frequency, very fast charging, good battery life, full protection against dust and water according to the IP68 standard, as well as high-quality cameras (for its class). Also worth noting are the almost clean Android 13 and the unusual design with faux leather and nice custom colours. Although the plastic frame spoils the impression a bit. Perhaps the only significant complaint about the smartphone is its modest performance. Everything is interesting with competitors. Because the closest and most dangerous competitor is the Motorola Edge 40, which is almost the same price. It has a more efficient processor, faster memory, a metal frame, and support for wireless charging. In contrast, the Motorola Edge 40 Neo has more RAM and a larger battery. And of course, there's also the Samsung Galaxy A54, which we wrote about in our Motorola Edge 40 review.

5 reasons to buy Motorola Edge 40 Neo:

• Bright OLED display with a refresh rate of 144 Hz
• High-quality cameras (in its category)
• Interesting design, eco-leather back panel and IP68 protection
• Fast charging and good battery life
• Almost pure Android 13

2 reasons not to buy the Motorola Edge 40 Neo:

• There are more powerful competitors
• A telephoto camera would be nice

Quick Transition:

1. What is the difference between the Motorola Edge 40 Neo and the Edge 40, and what position does it take in the lineup?
2. What's in the package?
3. What does the Motorola Edge 40 Neo look like?
4. How good is the screen?
5. What are the unlocking methods?
6. What about the performance, memory, sound, and battery life of the Motorola Edge 40 Neo?
7. How user-friendly is the interface?
8. How good are the cameras?
9. Bottom line

What is the difference between Motorola Edge 40 Neo and Edge 40 and what position does it occupy in the lineup?

Actually, the announcement of Motorola Edge 40 Neo surprised me. Perhaps the purpose of the model release was simply to expand the line, because the Motorola Edge 40 Neo and Edge 40 are very close in terms of characteristics and appearance. As for the design, the smartphones have almost identical dimensions, shape and a display curved on the sides. The back cover is made of either plastic or artificial, so-called vegan leather. The colour options differ. Motorola cooperates with Pantone and uses the corresponding shades in its smartphones. In the Motorola Edge 40, it's the magenta variant, in the Motorola Edge 40 Neo - all three colour options. The Motorola Edge 40 has a metal frame, while the Motorola Edge 40 Neo has a plastic one. Both models are IP68 dust and water resistant. the pOLED screens have the same 6.55-inch diagonal and 144Hz refresh rate. The resolution is 2400x1080 (20:9 aspect ratio) and there is support for HDR10. The display of the Motorola Edge 40 Neo is said to be slightly brighter: the peak brightness is 1300 cd/m° against 1200 in the Motorola Edge 40. Motorola Edge 40 Neo loses a little in terms of hardware: The MediaTek Dimensity 7030 has a more modest performance than the Edge 40's Dimensity 8020. And it uses a slower drive. At the same time, the Edge 40 Neo has more RAM. The cameras are almost the same. The main module of Edge 40 has a higher aperture optics. Motorola Edge 40 Neo has a larger battery, but does not support wireless charging. For a detailed comparison of features:

What's in the box?

Motorola is very pleased with the packaging of its smartphones, and this also applies to Edge 40 Neo. The smartphone is packaged in a light box with the Motorola logo and minimal printing. The packaging is plastic-free and recyclable, and like all the latest Motorola smartphones (Edge and Razr lines for sure), there is a fragrance inside that smells like perfume. Inside is the smartphone itself, a 68W TurboPower power supply, a Type-C cable, a tray eject tool, documentation and a protective bumper. Usually they are simple and not worthy of attention, but not in this case. The smartphone comes with an opaque matte bumper of the same colour as the smartphone. It is manufactured by the Swedish company agood company, which uses vegetable and recycled materials.

What does the Motorola Edge 40 Neo look like?

Externally, the Motorola Edge 40 Neo is very difficult to distinguish from the Motorola Edge 40: a pOLED display with minimal bezels, a front camera in a small round hole in the middle, and a speaker slot above the screen, which is also used for stereo sound. So everything is almost standard for a modern smartphone. Except for the side bezels of the screen, which used to be found mainly in flagships. Some users claim that such bends are the cause of false alarms, but this has not been observed during the use of Motorola Edge 40 Neo.

The frame of the smartphone is made of plastic. And not of the highest quality, judging by the tactile sensations. Thanks to the metal frame, Motorola Edge 40 feels more expensive and much more pleasant. The buttons are in the usual place. They protrude quite a bit above the surface of the smartphone, so it's convenient to press them.

On the top of the Motorola Edge 40 Neo there is a Dolby Audio icon and an additional microphone. At the bottom is a Type-C connector for charging and syncing, the main speaker, microphone and tray.

The tray is similar to the Motorola Edge 40: you can install only one nanoSIM. But eSIM support will help those who want to use more than one number on their smartphone.

The back panel is made of so-called eco-leather. It is soft, very pleasant to the touch and has a texture. The surface does not collect fingerprints and is not as slippery as plastic and glass versions. There is a Motorola logo in the middle of the back cover, and a Pantone logo with the name of the corresponding colour below. We had a very interesting blue version for review. There is also a light one with a greenish tint and a more classic black one.

The rear camera module has the shape of a rather large plastic rectangle with two lenses and a flash. It protrudes above the back cover, but the included case has a corresponding side to protect the cameras.

Motorola Edge 40 Neo looks stylish and interesting thanks to its unusual colour and eco-leather, but the plastic frame spoils the impression. The smartphone is protected against dust and water according to the IP68 standard. So it can withstand up to 30 minutes at a depth of 1.5 metres in fresh water.

How good is the screen?

Motorola Edge 40 Neo has a 6.55-inch POLED screen with curves on the sides. Theresolution is 2400x1080 (20:9 aspect ratio), the pixel density is about 402 ppi, the maximum refresh rate is 144 Hz, and the sensor readout frequency is 360 Hz. It promises 100% colour coverage of DCI-P3 space and a peak brightness of 1300 cd/m², and supports HDR10+. The protective glass used is a rather unusual NEG (Nippon Electric Glass) Dinorex T2X-7. The screen settings are quite standard: Ibrightness, dark and light themes, interface and text scale, flicker prevention (DC Dimming), refresh rate selection (60, 120, 144 Hz and adaptive with a limit of 120 Hz), night mode, display bezel illumination for notifications and two colour display modes with colour temperature adjustment.

The screen is really of excellent quality, with rich colours and good brightness, which allows you to comfortably use the smartphone in bright sunlight. The only complaint is not about the quality of the screen itself, but about the firmware or software. In all pre-installed and system applications, the interface works very smoothly, while in third-party applications there are frame breaks when scrolling quickly. According to the measurement results, the maximum brightness in "Bright" mode is 506.93 cd/m². Indeed, it is slightly higher than Edge 40, but the difference is at the level of measurement error. See the comparison in the table below. The colour gamut is much wider than sRGB. Colour reproduction is a little bit inclined towards cooler shades.

In the "Natural" mode, the colour gamut is close to sRGB, and the colour reproduction is closer to the reference values. Maximum brightness 502.123 cd/m².

Comparison with other models:

What are the unlocking methods?

Motorola Edge 40 Neo's biometric identification tools are quite standard and are the same as Motorola Edge 40. And they work the same way. The in-screen optical fingerprint scanner works very quickly and accurately. Although its location is a little lower than we would like. Face recognition works well in good light. But already at dusk, the speed and accuracy drops very sharply.

What about performance, memory, sound and battery life?

The Motorola Edge 40 Neo is powered by an octa-core MediaTek Dimensity 7030 processor. It has a more modest performance than the Dimensity 8020 in the Edge 40, including the graphics accelerator. So for game lovers, the Edge 40 will be more suitable. MediaTek Dimensity 7030 - 6-nanometre processor, including two 2.5 GHz ARM Cortex-A78 cores and six 2 GHz energy-efficient Cortex-A55 cores. The graphics accelerator is Mali-G610 MC3. The RAM is 12 GB LPDDR4X. The internal drive has a capacity of 256 GB of uMCP standard, which is significantly slower than UFS 3.1 in Edge 40. The results in the benchmarks are low, which is quite expected. But it's enough for fast operation of the interface and applications, and the smartphone is generally fast.

The stability of the device is slightly better than the Edge 40 with a more powerful processor. The CPU Throttling Test showed that the performance of Motorola Edge 40 Neo can drop up to 92% in 15 minutes of maximum load, which is very good. The body hardly heats up.

You can play modern games on the Motorola Edge 40 Neo, and there is a dedicated performance mode in the proprietary Games app. Call of Duty Mobile is well optimised and runs stably at high graphics settings. Diablo Immortal only runs at 30 FPS, but it's quite stable. XCOM 2 is not a good game for a smartphone: low frame rate and freezes. The game has two graphics modes: performance and quality. But they are not available on the smartphone, it seems that the performance mode is used by default.

Motorola Edge 40 has tri-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/6e, Bluetooth 5.3 LE and NFC for contactless payment. Supports global positioning systems: GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, BDS, LTEPP, SUPL. The smartphone reproduces stereo sound using the main and earpiece speakers and supports Dolby Atmos virtual surround sound. The volume is quite high, but the quality is not very good. And it drops significantly when the volume is turned up.

Motorola Edge 40 Neo has the largest 5000 mAh battery in the lineup. The smartphone supports proprietary fast charging TurboPower with a capacity of 68 watts. The smartphone charges from 0 to 100% in less than an hour. But wireless charging has been removed. The smartphone stably withstands a day of use, even if you add benchmarks and a few games to your daily tasks. With more moderate use, you can get up to 1.5 days.

How user-friendly is the interface?

Motorola Edge 40 Neo runs on almost pure Android 13, similar to Motorola Edge 40. The interface is standard: desktops with grid settings, widgets, a separate menu with all applications, a curtain with large switches, gesture or button navigation. There are different colour schemes, fonts, wallpapers, etc.

All additional Motorola branded features are collected in the Moto app. Personalisation, gestures, Moto Secure (security settings and a secure folder), additional display settings and entertainment (Games, Dolby Atmos and volume control settings for music playback using the volume buttons).

In addition, there are Moto Connect and Ready For apps. We have already talked about the latter. This is a desktop mode for connecting to an external monitor or tablet. It supports the connection of a keyboard, mouse and gamepad via Bluetooth. You can also use the screen as a touchpad. You can also duplicate the screen and use your smartphone as a webcam. Moto Connect is an application for connecting to a TV using Chromecast or Miracast. Which, in fact, is also available in stock Android.

How good are the cameras?

The camera set of the Motorola Edge 40 Neo is almost completely the same as the Motorola Edge 40. So the rear camera consists of two modules. The main one has 50 megapixels, 1/1.5" matrix size, 1.0µm pixel size, multi-directional PDAF phase detection and optical stabilisation. The only difference is in the optics. The aperture is f/1.8, while Edge 40 has f/1.4. The ultra-wide-angle module has a resolution of 13 MP, f/2.2, 120˚, 1.12µm. It has autofocus and is also designed for macro. The smartphone can record video in 4K@30fps, FullHD@30/60/120fps. The front camera is 32 MP, f/2.4, 0.7µm.

The camera app has a user-friendly interface: a carousel of modes, a separate section with additional modes, basic settings on the viewfinder screen, and additional settings in the drop-down menu. Among the changes compared to Edge 40 is the addition of a fixed 2-digital zoom button:

The main camera takes good pictures both in good light and at night. During the day, it produces good detail and fairly natural colours. The night mode also works well. The detail remains good, but there is a bit of noise and processing artefacts in the form of not quite natural sky colour and yellowish tints.

The undoubted advantage of an ultra-wide-angle camera in a smartphone is the presence of autofocus. However, the optics capture less light than the main camera, and while everything is fine during the day, in the evening the quality of the images and the amount of noise depends much more on the available light sources:

2x digital zoom:

Macro mode:

The maximum video resolution on Motorola Edge 40 Neo is 4K 30 FPS. The quality is quite good, although the jelly effect from electronic stabilisation is quite noticeable:

To sum up: five things you need to know about Motorola Edge 40 Neo.

• Motorola Edge 40 Neo is a mid-range Android smartphone with a 6.55-inch 144Hz OLED display.
• The smartphone is equipped with a modest Mediatek Dimensity 7030 processor, which is sufficient for applications and the interface, but not enough for games.
• It supports 68W fast wired charging and is fully charged in less than an hour.
• It is IP68-rated for dust and water protection.
• It has an eco-leather back cover

For those who want to know more:

• Motorola Edge 40 smartphone review: This is the Android you're looking for
• Motorola Edge 40 Pro flagship smartphone review: will charge faster than your pizza delivery
• Infinix NOTE 30 Pro review: charging in 50 minutes for up to UAH 10,000
• OPPO A98 smartphone review: fast charging and a microscope camera
• How to save money on Galaxy S23: Samsung Galaxy A54 and Galaxy A34 review