Motorola Edge 40 Pro smartphone review

Recently we reviewed the mid-budget smartphone Motorola Edge 40, which made quite a pleasant impression on us at the time – today we’re going to get acquainted with the flagship in this series, the Edge 40 Pro.

Motorola Edge 40 Pro specifications

The delivery package

Unlike other manufacturers who have recently started to ship their smartphones with only a USB cable and no charger, Motorola offers a very good package: in the box of the Motorola Edge 40 Pro you will find a USB-C/USB-C cable, a “charger” and a transparent plastic cover.

Design, ergonomics

The Motorola Edge 40 Pro is a rather large 6.67-inch smartphone with a body thickness of 8.6 mm and a weight of 199 g. The smartphone has a lot in common with the younger model, the Motorola Edge 40: the screen is slightly larger, but has the same 20:9 aspect ratio and rounded sides where it “transitions” smoothly into the aluminum side bezels. This solution makes the side bezels look even thinner, but creates additional difficulties for owners who want to apply a protective film or glass to the screen.

Unlike the younger model, the back of the Edge 40 Pro is made of glass (like the front – Gorilla Glass Victus). It has a matte finish (with a glossy logo in the middle) and is also rounded on the sides, which makes the side bezels quite thin. Like the Edge 40, the Pro model also has IP68 water and dust protection (it can be immersed in fresh water to a depth of 1.5 meters for 30 minutes).

The rear camera unit is slightly smaller than in the Edge 40, but here it is not part of the body – it is a separate module with a glossy surface and an additional frame around it. The Motorola Edge 40 Pro is available in two colors – black (Interstellar Black) and blue (Lunar Blue), and we got the first one for review.

The top edge has a noise-canceling microphone, a multimedia speaker, and a barely noticeable slot for the earpiece speaker; the left side is “clear”; and the right side has a volume control and a power button. Underneath is a SIM card holder for a nano SIM, a microphone for the earpiece, another multimedia speaker, and a USB-C port.

As already mentioned, the Edge 40 Pro is a rather large smartphone, and in average hands it might even feel a bit too big. A dedicated side panel with the most frequently used applications is designed to facilitate one-handed use, but users will still likely need both hands to fully navigate the interface.

The frosted glass on the back feels good in the hand and the body doesn’t seem too slippery. However, if you’re afraid of dropping it, you can use the included case: it’s made of hard plastic and is quite thin, so it doesn’t add too much to the phone’s thickness and overall dimensions.

Display

The Edge 40 Pro features a 6.67-inch 10-bit POLED display with a resolution of 1080×2400 pixels (pixel density – 394 PPI). Refresh rates of 60, 120 and 165 Hz are supported, as well as an automatic mode that can automatically set the frequency to 60, 90 or 120 Hz depending on the current mode of the smartphone. The screen supports HDR10+ and Dolby Vision technologies.

The maximum brightness in manual mode is 550 cd/m². In automatic mode, the peak brightness can go up to 1300 cd/m², according to the specifications. This is more than enough to use your smartphone comfortably even in direct sunlight. The minimum brightness is 3 cd/m², which is a fairly standard result.

It should be noted that even at zero brightness, the Edge 40 Pro’s display flickers very little, unlike many other OLED displays. You can almost completely eliminate even this very slight flicker using the Flicker Prevention menu item.

In the settings, you can select one of two video modes: “Natural” and “Saturated”. In the first case, the screen has a color limitation to the size of the sRGB space and very high-quality settings for the main parameters: the color temperature is 6400K, which is almost exactly the standard (6500K), the gamma value is almost perfectly equal to 2.2 over the entire brightness range.

Vivid mode shows an extended color gamut: bright, saturated colors you expect from an OLED display. The gamma value is also almost exactly the same as standard, but the color temperature is slightly higher – up to 7100K. This gives the picture a slightly cooler hue – if the owner does not like it, they can manually adjust this parameter using the corresponding slider, which changes the temperature in the range of 5700K to 9000K.

Platform and performance

The Motorola Edge 40 Pro uses the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, the latest “top of the line” chipset from Qualcomm. It is an 8-core chip (1×3.2 GHz Cortex-X3, 2×2.8 GHz Cortex-A715, 2×2.8 GHz Cortex-A710 and 3×2 GHz Cortex-A510) manufactured in 4 nm process technology, with the Adreno 740 module responsible for the graphics. According to the manufacturer, compared to its predecessor, it offers 35% more performance and 40% improved CPU efficiency, and 25% and 45% improved GPU efficiency. The smartphone is available in two memory configurations: 12+256 and 12+512 GB.

In synthetic benchmarks, as expected, the Edge 40 Pro shows very high results, at the level of other models of this chipset. It can be noted that its performance will be more than enough for any task, including “heavy games”.

With prolonged heavy use, the smartphone heats up noticeably, especially the upper back near the camera unit; in a typical grip, the body of the smartphone feels moderately warm, while the metal side edges feel significantly warmer.

The CPU Throttling test, which runs for 15 minutes, showed a moderate decrease in performance: CPU throttling was 76% at the end of the test. The 3DMark Wild Life stress test, which lasts longer, 20 minutes, showed a significantly stronger throttling: its stability rating was 55%, with the first run scoring almost 13 thousand points, while the last run scored 6.5 thousand.

In the Motorola Edge 40 Pro, the earpiece speaker is used as a second multimedia speaker to create stereo sound. The sound is loud, which is good for ringtones, but there are no surprises in terms of quality: a complete lack of bass and a noticeable lack of midrange. In short, you can watch the “conversational genre” on YouTube without any problems, but it’s still better to listen to music with headphones. They can be connected via Bluetooth 5.3 – wired connection is only possible via USB Type-C using an adapter to a 3.5 mm jack (not included, so you’ll have to buy it separately).

The fingerprint scanner is optical, under the screen. As usual for this type of sensor, it works quickly and reliably, but it is located quite low, which may not be very comfortable, especially for users who are used to scanners closer to the center of the screen on other smartphones.

The smartphone runs on Android 13 – the interface has an almost “standard” look of the standard system, except for additional functionality from the manufacturer – advanced personalization and security features, gesture support, etc., which can be found in a special Moto settings application.

Cameras

The rear camera of the Motorola Edge 40 Pro consists of three modules. The main one is a wide-angle OmniVision OV50A sensor with phase detection and optical stabilization (50MP, f/1.8 aperture, 1/1.55″ size). This is the same sensor used in the Edge 30 Pro. The ultra-wide-angle module is the Samsung JN1, also 50 MP, electronic stabilization, 114° viewing angle, f/2.2 aperture. Finally, the telephoto is Sony IMX663, 12 MP, f/1.6, 2x optical zoom, optical stabilization.

The front-facing selfie camera is a 60-megapixel OmniVision OV60A sensor with an f/2.2 aperture and no autofocus. It takes 15-megapixel photos by default, but you can enable 60-megapixel mode in the camera settings.

The camera app in the Edge 40 Pro was developed in-house, with a fairly standard interface. Swiping left and right on the viewfinder switches modes (slow motion, video, photo, portrait, pro mode, “more”), swiping down opens the settings of the current mode, swiping up does nothing. The More option includes additional modes such as Panorama, Dual Camera, Night Photo, and a maximum resolution of 50MP (the camera shoots at 12.5MP by default). The camera’s own application also provides access to Google Lens, which can be accessed via an icon in the lower left corner of the viewfinder in photo mode.

During the day, the rear camera takes very good pictures with a lot of detail and a complete lack of noise. Dynamic range is decent, but shadows can be too dark in high-contrast photos, which can result in a loss of detail. Also, the automatic white balance was not perfect in some shots – the images had a subtle greenish tint, which could be seen when comparing the same scene shot with different modules.

The quality of the telephoto module is average, and the images are not very detailed – compared to the main module, they seem to be scaled from a lower resolution. The ultra-wide-angle module shows better results: high contrast, good detail (although worse than the main module) and good color saturation.

Indoors, the images are very good, with no noise, and the dynamic range is almost unaffected by the lack of light. Night mode can be activated automatically (the option is enabled in the quick settings). In this case, the Edge 40 Pro produces quite good images, provided that the scene is more or less well lit, but the shutter speed increases significantly, so there is a risk of blurred images.

The standard 15-megapixel selfie camera captures high-quality images with excellent detail, accurate skin tones, and a wide dynamic range.

Autonomy

The Motorola Edge 40 Pro has a 4600 mAh battery, which is a pretty decent option, and together with a relatively energy-efficient chipset, it demonstrates very good autonomy: in the PCMark battery test, the smartphone lasted almost 12 hours. In real-world use, it can last one and a half to two days, depending on the mode of operation. It’s worth noting that the smartphone supports very fast wired charging – up to 125 watts, and with the included charger, the Edge 40 Pro is fully charged in less than half an hour. The Edge 40 Pro also supports wireless charging (15W).