Motorola Edge 20 Pro review

The 6.7-inch 144Hz OLED is pretty great

The Edge 20 Pro is equipped with a 6.7-inch OLED display that it shares with the Edge 20 non-Pro. A standard FullHD+ resolution in a 19.5:9 aspect makes for a 385pp pixel density. As we already covered on the non-Pro, the panel boasts a 144Hz refresh rate (with a 576Hz sampling rate to go with it), 1B color capability, and HDR10+ compliance.

In our display test, the Edge 20 Pro put out slightly higher numbers than the Edge 20, be it in manual operation, or with adaptive brightness enabled - perhaps the Pros get dibs on the ever so slightly better panels.

We got 484nits of max brightness using the slider with adaptive brightness turned off, and 673nits when blasting the phone with a bright light with the toggle switched on.

The maximum brightness is easily good enough for outdoor use, but a few competitors can shine brighter - 150-200nits is not a negligible difference. Mind you, the Moto should be able to push even more nits for smaller lit-up areas of its display for HDR use cases.

Color reproduction is controlled by a two-position menu option in display settings. The default is Saturated, which covers a wide color gamut and should be good for DCI-P3-based content. Natural, meanwhile, is the setting for sRGB content. There's also a cool-to-warm temperature slider with three steps in either direction.

In our testing, Saturated mode exhibited a noticeable blue cold shift, and overall accuracy was decent, at most. Bumping the temp slider one notch in the warm direction resulted in a noticeable improvement and brought overall accuracy to what you can call a 'calibrated' state (average dE2000 of 2.6), though white remained slightly off still. Natural mode, on the other hand, returned near-perfect results for our sRGB test swatches for an average dE2000 of 0.8.

The Edge 20 Pro has HDR10+ listed in its specsheet. We did get HDR streams from YouTube, but Netflix and Amazon Prime Video wouldn't cooperate. Still, the phone has Widevine L1 compatibility, and it does support up to FullHD resolution, leaving the HDR streaming up to the platforms to enable.

When it comes to refresh rate, the menu lets you choose between Auto, 60Hz, and 144Hz modes. 60Hz and 144Hz will lock the display at the respective refresh rate regardless of use case or activity, with the lone exception being Peek display which gets 48Hz in each mode. That is, usual suspects like the camera viewfinder and Google Maps will make it switch down to 60Hz when set to 144Hz, but video players or lack of touch input won't matter - 144Hz it's going to be.

The Auto mode is a bit more intricate. It's 'adaptive' in that it can switch between various refresh rates depending on content and activity - the numbers are 48, 60, 90, and 120, but oddly no 144. In this mode, the phone will maintain 120Hz as long as it registers touch input, only to switch down to 60Hz momentarily as soon as it detects inactivity. That's the default behavior throughout the UI, as well as in the bulk of apps (social media, browsers, Google Photos). Video apps don't quite conform to that, with YouTube defaulting to 60Hz, and Netflix doing the touch-based 120-60 switch in the UI but maintaining 60Hz for video playback. HRR-compatible games can get up to 120Hz as well.

Display settings

Motorola Edge 20 Pro battery life

A 4,500mAh battery powers the Motorola Edge 20 Pro, a capacity that's best described as standard. The non-Pro has a 4,000mAh cell, so it's nice to see that special treatment comes with the moniker.

In our testing, this Moto returned excellent results in most disciplines, save for web browsing at the maximum refresh rate. Even so, we'd say that 12:32h at 144Hz is a pretty solid result. The 23 hours of video playback speak for themselves and 40 hours of voice calls is more than what this reviewer does in a year. Standby performance is good as well.

Ultimately, the Motorola Edge 20 Pro scored an Endurance rating of 112h.

Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSerDevice app. The endurance rating denotes how long the battery charge will last you if you use the device for an hour of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. More details can be found here.

The web test was done at the highest refresh rate option, as usual. Opting for Auto-refresh rate (which used 60Hz for the most part, with momentary spikes to 120Hz on pageloads every 10s) yields an extra hour - 13:32h. That in itself is not a major difference, plus the amount of time the phone spends at 120Hz may actually be longer, depending on how much you touch your display while browsing.

Video test carried out in 60Hz refresh rate mode. Web browsing test done at the display's highest refresh rate whenever possible. Refer to the respective reviews for specifics. To adjust the endurance rating formula to match your own usage - check out our all-time battery test results chart.

Charging speed

The Edge 20 Pro is bundled with a 30W TurboPower adapter - no crazy numbers on this Moto, but not the basic 20 watts of the G100 either.

With that modest by today's standards charging capability, the Moto 20 Edge posted middling results in our charging speed test. A 30-minute stint from flat will get you to just over half-full, while 0-100% takes 1:17h.

That's notably slower than any of the proprietary solutions found on vivo/Realme/OnePlus/Xiaomi phones, but PowerDelivery-based handsets like the ZTE Axon 30 and the Galaxies are also quicker, the Samsungs even do it with lower-rated adapters than the Moto's.

30min charging test (from 0%)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 9
  100%
• Xiaomi 11T Pro
  100%
• Realme GT Explorer Master
  96%
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  83%
• ZTE Axon 30 5G
  76%
• ZTE Axon 30 Ultra 5G
  74%
• Motorola Edge 20
  68%
• vivo X60 Pro
  68%
• Poco F3
  67%
• Galaxy S20 FE (25W)
  57%
• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  54%
• Asus Zenfone 8 Flip
  53%
• Motorola Edge 20 Pro
  53%
• Motorola Moto G100
  37%
• Galaxy S20 FE (15W bundled)
  37%

Time to full charge (from 0%)

Lower is better

• Xiaomi 11T Pro
  0:21h
• OnePlus 9
  0:29h
• Realme GT Explorer Master
  0:33h
• ZTE Axon 30 Ultra 5G
  0:44h
• ZTE Axon 30 5G
  0:48h
• Xiaomi Mi 11
  0:50h
• Poco F3
  0:56h
• vivo X60 Pro
  0:58h
• Motorola Edge 20
  1:01h
• Galaxy S20 FE (25W)
  1:10h
• Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
  1:12h
• Motorola Edge 20 Pro
  1:17h
• Galaxy S20 FE (15W bundled)
  1:35h
• Asus Zenfone 8 Flip
  1:40h
• Motorola Moto G100
  1:54h

Speaker test

The Edge 20 Pro only has a single bottom-firing speaker, and that's looking like a major no-no on a €700 phone if you ask us. It's not very loud either - it earned an 'Average' score in our test among a crowd of 'Good' and 'Very good' competitors. It doesn't sound particularly exciting, but it's not utterly bad, so that's about an 'average' for quality as well.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.