iPhone 14 Pro Max – 1 Month Later – Long-Term Review!
the iPhone 14 pro Max has been around for over a month now and our team has been testing it almost since day one and I have a very mixed opinion about this phone because it is somewhat a downfall this phone is an interesting one especially interesting because of its similarities with the regular iPhone 14 pro and today we will look deeper to find out how a big iPhone manages to be worse or a better deal than the standard one let’s start with its size and body I have never been a fan of big phones but
this iPhone is massive it’s just Stellar bulky heavy massive a real problem for hands and Pockets it weighs just over half a pound with no cases attached if you decide to put on a case and a magsafe wallet you’re looking at an additional 16 ounces of weight holding it with one hand isn’t particularly comfortable and my pinky is in pain almost all the time material wise everything is as great as it can be stainless steel case and a flat glass on both sides is a very good combo pleasing to the touch and to the eye
but ergonomically it is almost too big to be called a smartphone and not a tablet moving on to something less flawed the performance this phone packs exactly the
doesn’t disappoint it runs any game on Max settings without a problem there is no game it can’t run and that’s not a surprise it is really close to the M1 chip at least according to geekbench a16 is a Powerhouse a hot Powerhouse it seems to me like apple year after year wants to give a serious chips as much power as possible neglecting thermals and a16 is hard but its big body helps dissipate heat quickly so when you’re gaming the screen will darken a couple minutes later than it did before so that’s nice also the a16
chip has an updated image signal processor where that photonic engine personally it feels somewhat redundant to talk about Apple’s processors at this point so I guess we’ll wrap it up now there are many changes under the hood but the screen has probably embraced the most of what Apple can offer the screen on 13 Pro Max was amazing bright colorful vibrant sharp and extremely fluid and apple took that screen and made it better its size is slightly bigger just a couple more pixels but still it was bright and they made it brighter now it can go
up to 2 000 minutes of peak brightness I can already say that higher brightness performs great in the studio under the lights but you don’t need to be a fortune teller to say that it will heat a lot in the summer the phone is big and the hidden surface is gigantic if you decide to watch videos in summer you will quickly lose all those thousands of nits simply because of overheating okay if the brightness isn’t the problem then what is maybe the always Sun well almost always sound to me seems like a gimmick a feature
for the sake of it it would have been weird for Apple not to add it this year when competitors had it for almost a decade now as you may have seen in my other videos I’m not a fan of it even if you get used to its brightness there is simply no practical point to have your display always turned on it just sits there distracting you consuming the battery yes it’s beautiful and aesthetic but it’s not something you would want to use daily on Apple watch and always sunscreen improves the looks making the watch more
visually stunning on an iPhone well it does almost nothing the wedges even the Apple made ones can take the full advantage of such a screen our phones are instruments meant to help get some work done and always on display is a mere distraction and the battery consumption is shockingly bad bad like really I don’t know it’s a useless feature that in my opinion should be turned off as soon as you activate the phone but what about Dynamic Island yeah I liked it on the regular 14 pro but on 14 pro Max this new feature was
designed specifically to be touched and interacted with and 14 pro Max is simply too big for that maybe uh piano players will like it more but it’s almost impossible to comfortably reach that cutout because of the size of this phone the cutout and all interface around it is all the way on top and reaching them without reachability functions seems impossible that’s one problem the second problem is it’s functionality it’s not as great as you may think and don’t get me wrong you can get some Advantage from that island but you have to be very specific
for example seeing your music player is nice but with this phone’s size it is easier to use reachability and open the control center rather than press on the dynamic Island itself if you start a timer you will see the icon up top showing you how much time is left this is a great function but answer this how often and do you need to be reminded of your timer personally that live activity widget on lock screen gives me much more useful timer related info than the dynamic Highland oh and one more thing Maps apple on stage
proudly demonstrated how Dynamic Island can be used for maps but I have a problem with that isn’t navigation a thing you’re supposed to look at all the time like when you’re driving having a small icon isn’t doing you any good right big full screen navigation with turns and streets is far better this principle goes to everything the dynamic Island does it’s a cool gimmick but mostly useless it’s a design element meant to distinguish iPhones from other phones to show everyone you have in new phones if you are a proud owner of 13 Pro Max and
think about upgrading don’t save your money for something better now to the cameras as you know I use 14 pro as my main phone and the camera module in that phone is identical to the one found on 14 pro Max and as you may have guessed this camera system is awesome the new front-facing camera has out of focus now which makes all selfies look sharper more detailed with improved dynamic range and colors and it now takes better videos too but the main free camera module is where all the Innovations are main 48 megapixel sensor is
massive and captures more details but only if you shoot in raw if you plan on shooting in Standard 12 megapixels you would rarely see any difference the sharpness the colors the dynamic range everything is only slightly better than on 13 Pro Max but only in good lighting as soon as you go darker the improved image processing pipeline really kicks in and produces really good results for example the night shots that took 13 Pro 3 seconds to take 14 pro needs only one second and the results on the 14 pro Max are better the photonic engine
really knows what it’s doing low light photos are more detailed less noisy and are better in every way and those 48 megapixel raw shots man they look amazing much more detailed much sharper much better textures exposure colors everything I wish only one thing about them smaller size each 48 megapixel raw image weighs around 75 megabytes which poses a real threat to your storage Ultra wide is slightly better too and all shots are better including low light telephoto is now more versatile thanks to a Smart sensor cropping that gives us an additional option to time zoom
now you can choose two times or three times the shots will look great each time not perfect but very very good I just wish Apple had increased the resolution of ultra wide and telephoto these modules are great but sometimes they’re struggling with details and bigger sensors could fix that and such a gigantic phone certainly has space for them don’t you think oh and if you’re a filmmaker then this phone will not disappoint you detailed stabilized videos with great color accuracy that’s what you get cinematic mode in 4k yields very admirable results not without floss but
still so the white balance and colors are shifting mid-shooting which can be annoying and the new action mode well it works like magic when the lighting is good but when there is not enough light the videos become a massive pixels almost fallen apart again a bigger sensor would help overall I consider cameras very solid and what has really had an impact on me was the battery life 14 pro Max has a massive battery which allows for fantastic screen time for me it’s like a night and day difference almost two days on a single charge that’s
something out of this world watching YouTube texting emails gaming more texting shooting videos all that for almost two days straight if I was to go on a two-day camping trip this phone would have been perfect for that thanks to the size of its battery the always sun has a smaller impact on the battery life which is great and it charges rather quickly not as quick as I would have wanted but quickly enough not to be bothered by that please Apple give us faster charging this phone is begging for it summon up great battery I wish
smaller iPhones were able to do that so what do we have in the end a gigantic phone that’s uncomfortable to hold and use but a totally fine device on its own I just feel like it’s too big and the price you’re paying is ludicrous especially if you upgrade the storage standard 14 pro is a much better deal it’s smaller more comfortable in hand and has all the same features except two-day battery life if you are a fan of big phones the 14 pro Max can be a good purchase but if you’re looking solely for the
best deal regular 14 pro is a no-brainer
