Home / Reviews / Smartphones / Motorola Edge 30 Ultra hands-on review: pixel-packed

Impressive hardware and effortless style for Moto's newest top-tier handset

200MP. Count ’em. Two hundred. That’s a lot of megapixels. Motorola’s latest top-tier smartphone, and the hero of the Edge 30 range, has one of the most densely-packed camera sensors around. The Edge 30 Ultra isn’t a one-trick pony, either: it’s got Qualcomm’s newest silicon, lightning-fast charging and a super-high refresh rate display. Oh, and it’s drop-dead gorgeous.

Sounds pricey, right? Not so fast. It might be top of Motorola’s totem pole, but you’ll soon be able to pick one up for £750. That neatly undercuts the Samsung Galaxy S22, and is a whole lot less than Apple is asking for the recently-announced iPhone 14.

On paper, it’s a winning combination. We got the chance to try it out ahead of Motorola’s official European launch to find out if it holds up in practice.

Beyond the headline specs, the Edge 30 Ultra is essentially an iterative update on last year’s Edge 30 Pro. It’s also known as the X30 Pro in China, where it launched earlier this year.

A blend of frosted glass and sand-blasted aluminium gives the Edge 30 Ultra a premium appearance, enhanced by a curved screen that melts into the metal.

It feels every bit as expensive as it looks, with the etched Moto logo adding some much-needed grip to the back surface. At 199g it’s reassingly weighty, and the rounded sides sit comfortably in your hand.

The visual changes from last year’s model are concentrated around the rear camera bump, which gives the 200MP sensor pride of place; the two secondary snappers sit underneath, inside a metal island in the top left corner. You could call it a little business-like, but we reckon it’s more purposeful than the curvy cutout seen on the Edge 30 Pro.

Other upgrades include an in-display fingerprint sensor, as opposed to having the power button perform double duty. We weren’t able to test how quickly it recognises your digits at Moto’s hands on event.

There’s no 3.5mm headphone port, but that’s pretty much expected from a 2022 flagship.

144Hz screens used to be the exclusive domain of gaming phones, but Motorola has been the exception to the rule. The Edge 30 Ultra continues that trend, and is as retina-soothingly smooth as you’d expect.

The display is generally a treat for the eyes, it’s pOLED panel stretched over 6.67in and delivering punchy, vibrant colours. We only got to play a few short video clips, but contrast was superb, and viewing angles were spot on as well.

You’re getting better-than-1080p resolution, which is enough to keep text looking crisp even with your nose practically pressed against the glass (which is Gorilla Glass 5, so shouldn’t be too susceptible to scrapes and scratches, even if it’s not the newer Victus).

It also plays nicely with HDR10+ content, although Motorola didn’t state peak brightness, so we don’t yet know how it’ll stack up to rivals for anyone in search of a phone with a truly bingeworthy display. What little footage we tried certainly had impact, even in a brightly-lit demo area.

That wasn’t enough to get a sense of how potent the stereo speakers are, either. They’re Dolby Atmos-certified, though, so we’re expecting good things once we get a phone in for a full review.

That 200MP main camera was always going to command the most attention, and rightly so: it’s also Motorola’s physically largest to date, at 1/1.22in, and can record 8K video as well as capture impressively detailed stills. Or at least that’s the theory – we weren’t able to take any of our test snaps away for a closer look.

It’s got all the hardware it needs to succeed, including optical image stabilisation and 2.56um pixels, which should come into their own in low light.

The secondary snappers are no weak link, with the ultrawide lens topping out at 50MP. It has macro autofocus, which is handy for close-up shots; it worked fairly well when we tried it on an artificial plant, with a good portion of the subject in focus.

Arguably the 12MP telephoto portrait is the most interesting of the three: it’s got an f1.6 aperture that promises lots of bokeh blur, and a 2x optical zoom, but the camera app’s portrait mode has been tweaked to toggle through focal lengths rather than zoom levels. It’s a move that should go down with pro-level photographers.

We have mixed feelings on high pixel count selfie cameras, as while they can record a lot of detail, the downsampling process can leave things looking softer compared to more basic rivals. The Edge 30 Ultra’s 60MP, f/2.2 sensor seemed to do a good job during our hands-on, but we’ll withhold judgment until we’ve tested it more thoroughly.

With the cooler, more efficient Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 running the show, the Edge 30 Ultra has every opportunity to be an absolute powerhouse. It’s paired with as much as 12GB of RAM, which should breeze through any multitasking.

Android 12 certainly felt zippy and responsive while we were trying out the phone, with apps opening pretty much instantly and with no waiting around when swapping between several running at once.

Gaming is more of an unknown, as we weren’t able to download any of our go-to titles. The Full HD resolution will probably work in its favour here; unlike premium rivals with QHD panels that demand more grunt, it won’t need to work quite so hard to deliver frame rates that take advantage of the 144Hz display.

Motorola’s take on Android is wonderfully minimal, as ever, with most of its tweaks limited to gesture shortcuts and a few customisation options. They’re mostly contained in a single app, too, so you don’t need to go digging through the Settings menu.

Would-be owners are promised three major Android OS updates and four years of security patches, which is a decent Showing. Google and Samsung still lead the way here, but Motorola has pulled slightly ahead of other brands.

Battery life remains to be seen. The Edge 30 Ultra has a smaller 4610mAh cell than last year’s Edge 30 Pro, although it also has a more efficient CPU, so things might balance out.

Motorola reckons with typical use you’ll last into a second day away from the mains with each charge. The rapid 125W wired charging can give “all day” power in seven minutes, or probably less time than you spend in the shower each morning. It’ll also do 50W wireless charging if you’ve got a particularly high-power pad, and can reverse charge your smaller gadgets too.

The Edge 30 Ultra feels as complete a flagship as Motorola has produced in years. The previous-gen model had most hardware boxes ticked, but this one-ups it with superior fast charging, a huge pixel count camera, and a more streamlined design that elevates it above Moto’s more wallet-friendly models.

First impressions suggest it could be a tempting alternative to big hitters like the Galaxy S22, although we’ll need to wait until we’ve properly been able to test out the cameras before delivering a final verdict. That, and see whether the battery really can deliver several days of use on the trot, despite being smaller than the outgoing Edge 30 Pro’s.

Motorola appears to have nailed it on the design front, at least – and good looks will always go a long way.

Not just a pretty face

UK-bound flagship has top-end specs and premium looks

Capable cameras also in the mix

The Galaxy Note is dead, long live the S22 Ultra

Previous Pixels delivered on the camera front, but conservative specs left them on the back foot. Good news, Google fans: that all changes here

The gap is narrowing between the Pro and Pro Max iPhone variants and nothing says this like the shiniest new addition, the Apple iPhone 13 Pro

OnePlus’ latest flagship is finally available after its initial new year reveal. Was it worth the wait?

An absolute stunner of a smartphone with an Achilles’ heel that may (or may not) be a dealbreaker

Get the Stuff newsletter in your inbox!

Kelsey Media, The Granary, Downs Court, Yalding Hill, Yalding, Kent ME18 6AL. © 2021 Kelsey Media Ltd, kelsey.co.uk