In recent years, many premium smartphones have failed to deliver truly exciting innovation. Most of them felt like tiny incremental updates over last year’s models. Fortunately, this is less of an issue in the mid-range sector: in 2023, we’ve got some exciting product launches with surprises that fundamentally increase the quality of the user experience. Motorola Edge 40 Neo is one of those exciting products, a mid-range smartphone that looks amazing and feels great to use. Not only does it offer IP68-rated water and dust protection, but it also has excellent mid-range hardware and a premium finish. If you want to know more about this product, its strengths, and weaknesses, read my review for the Motorola Edge 40 Neo:
Motorola Edge 40 Neo: Who is it good for?
This phone is a great choice for:
- Users who want a good-looking smartphone
- Those looking for a competent device at a mid-range price
- Users who want fast charging on their smartphone
- People interested in buying products that do more to respect the environment
Pros and cons
These are the things I consider pros about the Motorola Edge 40 Neo:
- Beautiful design with good-looking colors
- Fast 144 Hz display with excellent brightness
- Clean software with little to no bloatware
- Potent mid-range hardware
- Useful fast charging
- IP68-certified dust and water resistance
- Packaging and accessories that are friendly to the environment
There are some downsides too:
- Battery life could be better
- You only get two major Android updates
Verdict
The Motorola Edge 40 Neo is an elegant product with a nice grip, excellent software, a fast and bright display, and top-notch build quality. The color specialists at Pantone did a great job in helping Motorola design a beautiful phone, and the company’s focus on using recycled materials for the packaging and offering a recyclable protection case is something I greatly appreciate. The phone’s camera system is quite competent for its price, and the fast charging you get works well. While the phone’s battery life isn’t impressive, it isn’t bad either. I like the Motorola Edge 40 Neo, and it’s one of my favorite phones this year. While it isn’t perfect, it is one of the best mid-range smartphones you can get today.
Unboxing the Motorola Edge 40 Neo
I started liking the Motorola Edge 40 Neo as soon as I saw its packaging: it’s simple, without any plastics involved, made of 60% recycled materials and everything on it is printed with soy ink. You see the Motorola logo on the top cover, the product name, and the Pantone sticker with the color you’ve bought.
The packaging for Motorola Edge 40 Neo is made of recycled materials
On the sides, there’s a sticker with details about the exact phone you’ve bought, its serial number, production date, IMEI code, and so on. When you open the box, you see the phone wrapped in a protective paper sheet that features a large Motorola logo.
Open the box to see the phone
Continue unwrapping to find the phone itself, its 68 Watts fast charger, a USB cable, and a smaller box with some surprises inside.
You get a fast charger in the box
When you unpack everything, you also find a protective case made in partnership with agood company that makes smartphone cases from biodegradable plant-based materials. The Motorola Edge 40 Neo cases are manufactured using flax seeds and hemp, matching your phone’s color. Alongside all the accessories, you also get a SIM tool, a leaflet describing the collaboration between Motorola and agood company, the user guide, and some legal and safety documentation.
Everything you find inside the box
Many unboxing experiences tend to be boring. However, I thoroughly enjoyed unpacking the Motorola Edge 40 Neo thanks to the company’s focus on using plastic-free recycled materials and providing accessories missing on today’s premium smartphones.
Design and build quality
The Motorola Edge 40 Neo is available in three color variants: PANTONE Black Beauty, PANTONE Soothing Sea, and PANTONE Caneel Bay. They’re all beautiful, and they have matching protection cases to boot. For this review, I received the black version, which is 159.63 x 71.99 x 7.79 millimeters or 6.28 x 2.83 x 0.31 inches in size, weighing 170 grams or 5.99 ounces. The Soothing Sea and Caneel Bay models have a back of vegan leather, making them 0.10 mm thicker and 2 grams “heavier” than the black one. In contrast, the black version has an acrylic back.
The color versions for Motorola Edge 40 Neo
Motorola Edge 40 Neo has a classic smartphone design with rounded edges and a curved screen. As you would expect, the selfie notch is centered on the top side of the screen. There’s also a speaker grille just above the screen on the top.
Motorola Edge 40 Neo
The buttons are positioned like on most Android smartphones nowadays: on the phone’s right side. What’s different is that you have two Volume buttons for increasing and decreasing the sound level and the Power button. This button can open Google Assistant or the Power menu, and its behavior can be customized from the phone’s settings.
The buttons on the right side of the phone
The left side of the Motorola Edge 40 Neo doesn’t have any buttons.
No buttons on the left side of the phone
The bottom edge of the phone holds the SIM tray, the USB Type C port (works using USB 2.0), a microphone, and a speaker.
The bottom side of the Motorola Edge 40 Neo
On the top edge, you have another microphone and the Dolby Atmos logo printed discreetly. As you can see from the pictures included in this review, this phone doesn’t have a headphone jack.
The top edge of the phone
On the back of the Motorola Edge 40 Neo, you have an area that holds the camera system and the LED flash. In the middle, you see the Motorola logo, and on the bottom, the Pantone color of your phone. The PANTONE Black Beauty has a matte finish that looks good and feels pleasant to touch.
The back is quite elegant
For those curious about the protection cover, here’s how it looks when you attach it to the phone. It neatly protects the phone while giving you easy access to all its buttons and ports. I appreciate that it weighs only 26 grams (0.9 ounces). Therefore, when you attach it to the phone, the device doesn’t get as heavy as it does with protection covers from other brands.
Motorola Edge 40 Neo with the protection cover
The build quality of the Motorola Edge 40 Neo is quite good. It doesn’t feel like it can bend or break easily, and it’s also pleasant to hold in your hands and use. Many will appreciate that it comes with IP68-certified dust and water resistance.
Hardware specifications
The hardware inside the Motorola Edge 40 Neo is that of a capable mid-range device. The phone has an octa-core MediaTek Dimensity 7030 chipset, which provides 5G mobile connectivity, Wi-Fi 6E compatibility, Bluetooth 5.3, and NFC. The phone has 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage space. Unfortunately, there’s no support for extending it through a microSD card. The Motorola Edge 40 Neo offers Dual-SIM connectivity, but only in a one nano SIM and one eSIM configuration.
The hardware inside the Motorola Edge 40 Neo
The display is 6.55 inches and uses an AMOLED panel with a 2400 x 1080 pixels resolution and a maximum refresh rate of 144 Hz. Unfortunately, it doesn’t come with LTPO, so it doesn’t change its refresh rate dynamically depending on how you use the phone. You manually set the refresh rate to the desired level, and based on your chosen value, your battery life takes a hit or not. The screen has a pixel density of 402 ppi, is HDR10+ certified, and has a peak brightness of 1300 nits. Another important aspect is that the screen is protected by Gorilla Glass 3 for more endurance.
The refresh rate for Motorola Edge 40 Neo
The front selfie camera uses a 32-megapixel lens with an f/2.4 aperture. On the back, we get a 50 Megapixel wide camera, with an f/1.8 aperture, and an ultra-wide lens, with 13 Megapixels and an f/2.2 aperture. Only the main wide camera offers optical image stabilization. The front camera can record video at a maximum resolution of 1080p and 60 frames per second. The rear cameras can record video in up to 4K resolution and 30 fps.
The main cameras
The phone’s battery is non-removable and has a capacity of 5000 mAh. Motorola Edge 40 Neo is also capable of 68-watt fast charging. However, you must enable the Charge boost feature in the Settings app to benefit from it.
Enable Charge boost for fast charging
The technical specifications of Motorola Edge 40 Neo are quite competitive for a phone in its price area. The phone has excellent connectivity options, a good mid-range chipset, solid fast charging, and a beautiful screen that’s also very responsive. For more information, visit the phone’s official webpage: Motorola Edge 40 Neo.
If you want to know about the user experience offered by the Motorola Edge 40 Neo, the quality of its cameras, its performance in benchmarks, and its software, read the next page of this review.
