Motorola Edge 40 Review: Mostly Cutting Edge

The 

Motorola Edge 40 primary camera samples (tap to see full size)

The ultra-wide camera is also quite good for the price. There is distortion around the edges but that’s quite common for ultra-wide camera lenses. The ultra-wide sensor also supports autofocus, which means that you can get very close to a subject to shoot high-resolution macro shots. This certainly is a much better implementation than the 2-megapixel macro sensors that we see in many smartphones across different price points. That being said, the macro images were not as colour accurate as they could have been.

Motorola Edge 40 ultra-wide, macro camera samples (tap to see full size)

The rear main camera can shoot portrait images at 24mm, 35mm and 50mm. While subject segmentation is accurate in most cases, the blur looks unnatural and the skin tones looked too soft when capturing human subjects.

Motorola Edge 40 main camera samples (Top to bottom: 24mm, 35mm, 50mm portrait modes)

The front camera fails to get skin tones right most of the time. I could see a slight red hue in the selfies clicked by the Motorola Edge 40. Also, while portrait mode offers a creamy background blur, it also blurred out parts of my face.

Front camera sample shot on Motorola Edge 40 (tap to see full size)

In terms of video recording, the Motorola Edge 40 can shoot up to 4K 30fps or 1080p 60fps. I liked the overall colour reproduction and dynamic range performance of the rear and front cameras. The rear camera comes with OIS, which does a decent job. There is also a Horizon lock feature, which locks the orientation of the frame even when you flip the phone upside down while recording 1080p videos. 

Verdict

The Motorola Edge 40 packs some capable hardware wrapped in a curvy, sleek body that screams premium from a distance. The handset offers an excellent in-hand feel, great multimedia experience and relatively good performance. The software too, is quite feature-rich and clean.

The Edge 40 also delivers some features which are unheard of in the segment such as an IP68 rating, a 144Hz pOLED curved-edge display, and wireless charging.

However, the cameras definitely need more work. While the hardware and features seem solid on paper, Motorola needs to work on optimising them further for that competitive edge.

If you want an all-rounder smartphone under Rs. 30,000 and are willing to compromise a bit on the cameras, the the Motorola Edge 40 can be considered. We feel that the Redmi Note 12 Pro+ 5G (Review) and the Samsung Galaxy A34 5G (Review) offer slightly better camera performance. For sheer raw processing power, you can certainly consider the Poco F5 (Review).

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