The Moto Edge lineup of smartphones provides an authentic flagship experience as we saw last year with the Moto Edge 30 series lineup of smartphones where the Moto Edge 30 (Review) was a complete all-rounder that bought some outstanding specifications like a 144Hz pOLED display, a thin and sleek design, a powerful Snapdragon 778G chipset, a 50MP triple camera setup, a 4020mAh battery, etc.

However, this time Motorola seems to bring some excellent upgrades on its latest smartphone i.e. Moto Edge 40 in almost all the aspects like a new build and design, a 144Hz pOLED display, a newer MediaTek Dimensity 8020 chipset, a newer 50MP dual camera setup, a slightly larger 4400mAh battery with 68W fast charging, etc. On top of it, the clean Stock Android experience provides a richer software experience. 

Also, it brings some segment-first features like an IP68 rating and wireless charging which is not found on many smartphones in this price segment. So do all the attractive specifications make the Moto Edge 40 worth buying and is this the best smartphone in this highly competitive premium mid-range segment? 

Let's find out in the full review.

The Moto Edge 40 sports a premium vegan leather finish at the back that feels premium and sturdy while holding hands. The vegan leather finish has a textured finish that provides it a great grip. It does not catch any fingerprints or smudges which is really good. However, this premium vegan leather finish is available in three different colours - Nebula Green, Viva Magenta and Eclipse Black.  

The Nebula Blue colour has a smooth matte finish which does not catch much fingerprints or smudges. The back is not flat as that on the Moto Edge 30 but is slightly curved around the edges. The Moto Edge 40 has an IP68 rating which makes it dust and water-resistant, a feature usually found on many premium flagships that cost much higher than the smartphone.

The camera module is rectangular in shape and houses a set of dual cameras which are proper cameras and have dual LED flashlights. However, the camera module is slightly raised and the colour matches the colour at the back of the smartphone. The camera module feels slightly raised and does wobble a bit when you keep the smartphone on a flat surface. 

The Moto Edge 40 weighs around 171 grams for the vegan leather finish and 167 grams for the Lunar Blue colour variant which makes it lighter but still the Moto Edge 30 was slightly lighter at 155 grams.

Around the sides, all the colour variants of the Moto Edge 40 have an aluminium frame that houses the power button with volume buttons on the right side whereas the left remains completely cleaner. 

Also compared to the Moto Edge 30 which is 6.8mm thick, the Moto Edge 40 is thicker at 7.6mm. At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille, a primary microphone and a single SIM card slot. However, the smartphone supports dual SIM as the secondary SIM is an e-SIM. On the top, there is a secondary noise-cancelling microphone only with the Dolby Atmos branding. 

There is no dedicated slot for a microSD card for storage expansion further. On the front, the Moto Edge 40 sports a premium curved display which curves both to the right and left sides. The bezels are also minimum all around the sides and the selfie camera is located in the centre on the top in a small punch-hole. Overall, the build and design definitely feel premium with that vegan leather finish and the addition of the IP68 rating.

The Moto Edge 40 sports a premium-looking curved display and the display has a screen size of 6.55 inches with a Full HD+(1080x2400 pixels) pOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9. Motorola has been using pOLED display panels from the past as pOLED is lighter since it uses plastic instead of glass on AMOLED but it provides slimmer bezels on the display compared to AMOLED displays.  

The display has good viewing angles and colour reproduction is very good. Like its predecessor, this one also gets a 144Hz refresh rate where in settings you can choose from four different options - Auto, 60Hz, 120Hz, and 144Hz. Switching the display to 144Hz, provides much smoother scrolling between webpages, playing games feel smoother and also multitasking is a breeze.

Switching to Auto mode restricts the refresh rate to 120Hz as it cannot reach 144Hz in Auto Mode. In the Auto Mode, it does switch between 60Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz respectively depending on the application usage on the display. Like for example, while watching videos, the display switches to standard 60Hz, during gaming, the display switches to 120Hz, etc.

However, the standard 60Hz does provide the best battery life of all. There is also the 120Hz mode where you can set the display to run almost all applications at 120Hz but still, it is slightly restricted to a few applications by default. Combined with the 144Hz refresh rate, you get a 360Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses.

The Moto Edge 40 comes with an in-display optical fingerprint scanner that works accurately and is faster. The display on the Moto Edge 40 can reach a peak brightness of 1200 nits which is very good but the normal brightness levels hover somewhere around 500-600 nits and around 800 nits under direct sunlight. The display visibility is also very good under direct sunlight thus no black crush is noticed.

The display on the Moto Edge 40 has two different colour modes to choose from - Saturated and Natural where switching to Saturated mode provides vivid and punchier colours thus covering the DCI-P3 gamut whereas the Natural provides realistic slightly off-white colours which cover the sRGB colour space. You can also set the display to a warmer or cooler tone.

The display also has support for HDR10+ so you can stream HDR content on YouTube and also there is support for Widevine L1, so you can stream HDR content on OTT platforms like Netflix, Prime, etc. but currently as of now there is no support for HDR on Netflix. In terms of display protection, Motorola has not specified anything and also sadly there is no screen protector applied on the display out of the box.

Overall, the curved display looks premium and is excellent for multi-media consumption.

The Moto Edge 40 sports a powerful and newer MediaTek Dimensity 8020 chipset which is an octa-core chipset having 4x2.6 GHz Cortex-A78 cores and another 4x2.0 GHz Cortex-A55 cores coupled with a Mali-G77 MC9 GPU and built on an efficient 6nm process. In terms of daily performance whether scrolling through web pages, playing games, etc. felt smoother and faster.

In gaming, the Moto Edge 40 can handle almost all heavy games easily like BGMI, Call Of Duty Mobile, etc. but in BGMI, the smartphone could easily run at HDR graphics with Ultra frame rates and the gameplay was very smooth without any frame drops or stutters noticed. After longer hours of gaming for 3-4 hours continuously, the back of the Moto Edge 40 did not feel warmer.

In the CPU throttling test, the smartphone could maintain a sustained performance of around 70-80 per cent which is good but there is some throttling noticed at times. The benchmark scores came out very good. In terms of network connectivity, there is support for 14 bands of 5G and good carrier aggregation. The Moto Edge 40 is available in only one variant - 8GB LPPDR4X RAM with 256GB UFS 3.1 storage.

The highlight of every Motorola smartphone is the pure Stock Android experience that you get. The Moto Edge 40 runs on the latest MyUX built on top of Android 13 out of the box. The MyUX gets a lot of customizations where you change icon shape, size and colours, different themes and wallpapers, fonts, fingerprint scanner animations and a handy Moto app that contains a couple of features.

The Moto app has different sections to choose from - Personalize where you can apply any Motorola or Google wallpapers and also you can use AI to create a wallpaper from the photos in the gallery, then there are gestures like a karate chop to turn on/off the flashlight. twist the smartphone back and forth to open the camera, a swipe-to-split function is present if you swipe from the side to the centre, etc.

These features are very handy and also you get Motorola's own Peek Display and Attentive Display. The Peek Display works almost like an Always-On display where the display lights up as you take the hand closer to the display and also it displays the date, time and all the notifications where you can tap on a notification to get more details and also interact with them.

Attentive Display does not turn off the display as long as you are looking at it. Then there is the Edge Lights where the edges on both sides light up whenever any notification comes in and you can also change the colour of it. The third feature is the Gametime Utility feature under the Play section which provides features like blocking calls or notifications and also screen-recording during gameplay, etc.

There is also a separate setting under the Play section regarding Dolby Atmos which can be turned on for enhanced sound output. Other features include Moto Secure where you can put a PIN to secure your smartphone as well as for the applications for easy access, lock your network and security settings as long as the smartphone is locked. There is the Secure Folder where you can keep your sensitive files.

There is a very interesting feature called 'Ready For' where you can use the smartphone to connect to Windows laptop/PC or the television where you can send/receive different files between both devices, you can also use the smartphone interface on either the television or the PC/laptop. The smartphone can be used as a mouse to control the PC/ desktop and television. 

It can also be used for video calls where you can turn on your camera application to see yourself and see others on the external display like television or PC/laptop easily when connected. Other features include Privacy Dashboard where you can control different applications using the microphone, camera, and location. However, there is no such bloatware present except for one or two applications.

In terms of software updates, Motorola has not been the best but with the Moto Edge 40, it is promising another two major AndroidOS updates and three years of security patches which is very good but Motorola has been very slower in pushing software updates in the past which needs some improvement.

The Moto Edge 40 comes with a dual set of cameras which include a 50MP f/1.4 Omnivision OV50A sensor on the main camera with another 13MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera. On the front, there is a 32MP f/2.4 camera. 

The images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and good dynamic range. The colours look natural without any oversharpening as such. The noise is significantly less in the background and since it has a wider f/1.4 aperture, it does capture more light and so images taken during the night also come out with an excellent level of detail and dynamic range with less noise in the background.

The colours look natural and there is no overprocessing as such. There is the Auto Night Vision which is triggered automatically while taking images during the night. The exposure is well under control and without the Auto Night Vision mode (you need to trigger it off manually), the details look much sharper but there is some amount of noise present in the background but you have good dynamic range.

The 13MP ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of details that look sharper and have a good dynamic range with natural colours in the background. There is some amount of noise present in the background and similar is the case during the night also where with the Auto Night Vision turned on by default, the images have details that look sharper and have a good dynamic range with less noise present

The colours look slightly washed out, but the exposure is still well maintained. With the Auto Night Vision turned off, the images do have some noise in the background, the details in the shadows are crushed and the dynamic range comes out just average. However, the colours come out accurate with no oversharpening as such.

The 13MP ultrawide camera here also doubles up as a macro camera wherein it uses the zoom selector in Photo mode and since it is not a fixed focus camera, you can go very closer to an object and the details look sharper with less noise, colours look vivid and have good dynamic range. In terms of portraits, the skin tones look natural with good dynamic range and edge detection.

However, the background blur needs a slight improvement as it sometimes blows out the background too much but most of the time the background blur is well implemented. In terms of selfies, the 32MP camera takes selfies at 8MP by default and these selfies come out with good dynamic range and details look sharper with less noise in the background. The skin tones look accurate also.

In terms of videos, the primary camera of the Moto Edge 40 can record 4K videos at 30fps and the videos come out with good dynamic range and details look sharper with less noise as there is OIS present. The ultrawide camera can record 4K videos at 30fps which comes out with good details and dynamic range but have some amount of noise in the background.

In low-light videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details and good dynamic range. The colours look natural but there is some overprocessing taking place at times. The ultrawide camera can also record 4K videos at 30fps which is great as most smartphones can only record 1080p videos at 30fps only in this price segment.

The videos from the ultrawide camera come out with good details and dynamic range but there is some amount of noise present while taking videos during the day whereas at night, the videos have slightly washed-out colours and there is some amount of noise present in the background. The Moto Edge 40 can also record 4K videos at 30fps which is good.

The videos from the front camera come out with good dynamic range but the details look slightly softer and there is some amount of noise in the background. The portraits from the front camera come out with good dynamic range and edge detection but still, the noise is present. The portrait videos come out with good details and dynamic range with proper edge detection with a slight improvement in background blur needed. 

The Moto Edge 40 sports a slightly larger 4400mAh battery which is slightly larger in capacity compared to the 4020mAh battery on the Moto Edge 30. In terms of normal usage which includes scrolling through webpages, streaming social media, playing games casually, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for one and half days with the display set to 144Hz or 120Hz.

With heavy usage that includes playing heavy games like BGMI, Call Of Duty Mobile, etc. for 3-4 hours continuously, running benchmarks, attending calls for 5-6 hours, recording videos for longer hours, etc. the smartphone easily lasted a day but a short top up is needed at the end of the day. The standard screen-on time was around 5.5-6 hours with normal usage and 3.5-4 hours with heavy usage.

In terms of charging, the Moto Edge 40 comes bundled with a slightly larger 68W fast charger compared to the 33W fast charger bundled with the Moto Edge 30. So the 68W fast charger takes around 40-45 minutes for a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent which is very good. However, a 30-minute charge takes around 90 per cent which is really good.

The Moto Edge 40 also sports 15W wireless charging so you can keep the back of the smartphone on top of any wireless charger and it takes around 1 hour 45 minutes for a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent. However, there is no Power Sharing present which may not be a big concern. 

The Moto Edge 40 sports a dual stereo speaker setup that sounds adequately loud and clear both from the earpiece as well as the loudspeaker. The level of bass is good and the loudness does not feel muffled at the highest volume settings. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack present. You do get support for Dolby Atmos which is great for enhanced sound output. 

Overall, the Moto Edge 40 feels like a complete all-rounder as Motorola has packed some of the best specifications which include a premium build and design, a 144Hz pOLED display for multi-media consumption with stereo speakers, a powerful MediaTek Dimensity 8020 chipset for daily performance and gaming, good set of cameras, good battery life with support for wired and wireless charging, etc.

The software experience is clean and bloatware-free thus having a lot of features for daily usage. However, the standout specifications include the IP68 rating and support for wireless charging which most of the smartphones omit in this price segment. However, there are some areas where the Moto Edge 40 could have been better.

Though you get a rich and clean software experience, the timely software updates are very slower and still it is not in the league of Samsung or OnePlus smartphones that do provide one extra AndroidOS update. The front camera needs some improvement in terms of videos and also the portraits do need some work regarding background blur. 

The performance is good on a daily basis as it handles almost all tasks easily but still, gaming is not its core strength and also there is some thermal throttling taking place at times. But keeping these things aside, you are getting one of the best premium-looking designs, an excellent display, good performance, a good set of cameras with cleaner software experience and good battery life with faster charging. 

Overall, the Moto Edge 40 clearly shows that Motorola has definitely stepped into the market with some very high ambitions and definitely the Moto Edge 40 lives up to that standard thus providing a premium experience which is unrivalled.