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so here's the iPhone 16 Pro Max I've been using this phone for slightly more than a week and if you are buying it because of the new camera control trust me that will be a mistake and more on that later in the camera section but what I like about this phone is the list of drawbacks is very short which makes it the most refined iPhone ever but still it didn't convince me to upgrade from the 15 Pro Max but if you own a 14 Pro Max or earlier I think it's worth it so let's jump into the review starting with the design and build the quality there isn't much changed this year all the changes are related to the screen first it's 6.9 in up from the 6.7 with noticeably Slimmer bizzel which I like a lot if you are planning to use it without a case you will feel like you are holding the screen not the phone overall the screen real estate got significant upgrade but it makes the 16 Pro Max taller wider and heavier than before the differences are not massive on paper but you can certainly feel them when you hold both at the same time moving to the build quality it's impressive as always Apple knows how to choose premium materials the only difference is the front ceramic Shield is tougher than before but I will keep this for other channels to test and to give us more insights I wish it got anti-reflective front glass same as the gorilla glass armor of the s24 ultra as it makes a big difference under direct sunlight or if there are a lot of light sources around you but unfortunately you are stuck with the same glossy finish to wrap up the slimmer bizel the bigger display and dimensions are the only notable changes in the overall experience other than this anything else is just the same as the 15 Pro Max now let's talk about the display you get slightly better screen to body ratio when compared to the 15 Pro Max thanks to the Slimmer bizzel the peak brightness on the spec sheet is identical you get the same 1,000 nets for HDR and 2,000 Nets under direct sunlight but in this side bys side comparison against the competition the 15 Pro Max's display looks brighter than the 16 Pro Max which is weird similarly the 2600 Nets of the s24 ultra also look darker than the 15 Pro Max keep in mind that none of these phones was warmed to let the software intentionally dim the display in contrast the 9 Pro XL had the brightest display which makes it pop under direct sunlight thanks to its 3,000 nits the only Improvement AAL did in this area is in the lowest to brightness it can go as low as one net in complete darkness and another side by side comparison have all phones set to the lowest brightness possible with the 9 Pro XL and the s24 ultra having the extra dim feature enabled in this case the s24 ultra is the darkest followed by the 16 Pro Max then the 9 Pro XL and the 15 Pro Max comes last but after enabling the reduced white Point accessibility feature on the iPhones and the have it set all the way up to 100% both had extremely dark displays that didn't allow me to see anything even in complete darkness with a slight Edge going to the 16 Pro Max for being the darkest beside the brightness both iPhones look identical in terms of colors and wide balance the resolution is a bit higher in favor of the 16 Pro Max but because of the bigger display you will end up with the same 460 pixels per inch either way both lag behind the competition in the resolution with the s24 ultra taking the lead followed by the 9 Pro XL moving to the pwm Demming for those who care there is no improvement this year as it looks identical to the 15 Pro Max in this comparison with the s20 before Ultra leading the competition so overall the 16 Pro Max display is great as expected from any Flagship but there is almost zero improvements over last year it still lacks behind the competition in the resolution Peak brightness and pwm dimming plus the improved low brightness is usess as the reduced white Point accessibility feature can make the 15 Pro Max's display almost as dark as the 16 Pro Max now let's talk about the Performance Based on my heavy workload test there is definitely a notable Improvement in the sustained performance as claimed by Apple thanks to the new aluminum clad substructure that gives it the edge over its predecessor by 20% if you didn't watch this video you will find the link in the description to know more but in a nutshell I stress the phones by running four heavy tasks at the same time for 30 minutes to see which one will survive I've been doing this test for a while and historically iPhones usually fail or rarely pass due to Thermal issues but this time the 16 Pro Max finished the 30 minutes in a good shape with lower temperature and Battery consumption than the competition it only lacked behind in the brightness and the stability as it paused the YouTube video twice throughout the test but nothing major in day-to-day usage you will barely notice the difference between the 16 Pro Max and the 15 Pro Max you might only consider the upgrade if you really need a better sustained the performance to run heavy games but other than this it's not worth it moving to the battery that's where you will see big improvements as the 16 Pro Max is just mindblowing and here's an example I started the day at 7:35 a.m.
I have the phone set to light theme and used it on Wi-Fi and cellular data before going to B at 1213 a.m. the battery was at 46% because the iPhone doesn't calculate the screen on time since last full charge I added the numbers manually and at this point I had a total of 5.65 5 hours I started the next day at 700 a.m. with 41% so it lost 5% overnight from 1213 a.m. to 7 a.m. I used it for another 2.35 hours till 2:00 p.m. with 20% left and here are the apps I used it's mainly YouTube other social media apps phone calls and video calls to sum up I got 8 hours of a screen on time in 30 hours since I unplugged it from the charger with 20% battery left so overall the the battery life of the 16 Pro Max is in a league of its own but I found the camera to be its biggest enemy you will see here that I used it for 8 minutes and that consumed 3% I only took some photos without recording any videos here's another example after using it for 1 hour and 8 minutes to take photos and videos in this case it consumed 44% which is a bit higher than what I expected but other than this it's very solid moving to the charging speed I plugged it to my 45 W charger at 216 PM with 20% battery and The Limited charge feature is disabled after 1 hour of charging it reached 91% and the temperature was at 32.2 de C which is not bad but the last 9% took another 27 minutes which is a lot for such a small number but this is how the optimized charging Works to save the battery from overheating another Improvement is the faster wireless charging that can reach up to 25 watts using the new Apple Mac safe charger so overall the charging speed is similar to what you get from Samsung and Google but no way near to what the Chinese Brands offer the other thing that impressed me is the speaker quality and volume it's a lot better than the 15 Pro Max which is already impressive if I don't know what devic is playing the music I might think it's a portable Bluetooth speaker so let's take a [Music] listen you sto My Heart of Gold after my silver soul can you take any deeper [Music] now I gave you all I put you on this gold and gr but I'm a little stronger now you casting on my promises you know I'm too rest now I've learned to never help you out cuz I'm done cleaning up your mess found myself in my regress I've become a little strong now a little [Music] strong now let's talk about the camera and I will start with the camera control it reminds me of my Sony ericon k800i when the camera button was a cool feature but now we have touch screen so in my opinion it introduces more issues than benefits imagine you want to take a zoomed photo without the camera control you will slide your finger to reach the zoom level you want hit the shutter key and you are done with the camera control you have to give it a little push then slide to zoom and hit it again to take the shot not to mention that your push will shake the camera so you might end up with a blurry image and the same applies to night photos as both require steady hands and if you have it set to the camera's option you have to push it to bring the slider slide to choose the lens then push it again to capture while using the screen is much faster just tap on the lens you want and snap the shot it doesn't only add an extra step but it also takes a longer time than just using the screen so you might miss the moment if you decided to use the camera control these are just a couple of examples but the same applies to all other op options I found it much easier to use the screen in pretty much all scenarios and what makes it even worse is the placement in landscape orientation it's a bit higher than expected and in portrait it's a lot lower than expected which makes it uncomfortable to use either way in portrait you have to move your thumb all the way down which might risk dropping the phone and it makes it harder for your hand to push the button so you're going to shake it even more while snapping the shot plus left-handed people will probably never use it and here's a fun fact the camera control doesn't allow you to open the camera on a specific camera mode while the action button does the only added benefits are the ability to save your action button for something else in case you have it set to open the camera or use it to open the camera in social media apps which is faster than opening the app manually but these two benefits don't justify the effort and I'm sure a lot of Android oems will just copy it because Apple did it but let's see if they will be able to offer a better implementation as far as apple is focusing on the buttons for the past 2 years for some reason I think it's about time to put the volume rockers and the power button on the same side as I'm really fed up from accidentally taking a screenshots when I press the power button to lock the screen so overall I think the camera control is just a gimmick and I didn't find myself using it and now let's talk about the new camera features the top feature on my list is the 4K 120 slow motion videos not because it's something new to mobile phones but I found it to have an impressive quality when compared to the same feature on the s24 Ultra the only downside is the massive file size a 2 Minutes video is about 790 mbes while the HD version of the 15 Pro Max is only 190 MB next we have audio mix along with the four new studio microphones to boost audio quality so let's compare it against the competition with and without audio mix so here's a quick sample to compare the microphone sound quality from each phone I have the s24 ultra the 16 Pro Max the 15 Pro Max and the pixel 9 Pro XL as you see I'm sweating like crazy so I'm sorry for the way I look but I don't have any other option but anyways I'm recording this footage to give you an idea about the differences in the mic quality plus I will use the same footage to try audio mix of the iPhone 16 Pro Max and to compare it against Google's audio Magic Eraser that will allow you to remove specific sounds from the the background and see which one is better comparing the mics straight out of the camera the 15 Pro Max captured the more ambient and wind noise than all other phones the s24 ultra produced a quiet and tenny voice as if it has a noise cancellation filter already applied the 9 Pro XL was the best in handling the noise without being artificial but my voice was a bit quiet lastly the 16 Pro Max was the second best in handling the noise after the pixel but my voice was louder and Fuller so it has the best balance in my opinion now let's compare audio mix against the pixel 9 Pro XL audio Magic Eraser the iPhone has three presets in frame studio and cinematic while the pixel gives you the option to adjust the volume of each sound separately so I will tune down everything and only keep my voice to compare it against the three modes of audio mix so here's a quick sample to compare the microphone sound the quality from each phone I have the s24 ultra the 16 Pro Max the 15 Pro Max and the 9 Pro XL as you see I'm sweating like crazy so I'm sorry for the way I look but I don't have any other option but anyways I'm recording this footage to give you an idea about the differences in the mic quality plus I will use the same footage to try audio mix of the iPhone 16 Pro Max and to compare it against Google's audio Magic Eraser that will allow you to remove specific sounds from the background and see which one is better from what I I heard the 16 Pro Max has better microphones which allowed it to produce Better Sound than the pixel plus it adjusts the EQ to give you a studio like effect which I like but the iPhone lacks the flexibility of audio Magic Eraser as it gives you the control over what to remove and what to keep the third addition is the new 48 megap Ultra wide when you use the default 12 megap mode it looks about the same as the 15 Pro Max but a tiny bit brighter in the highlights even the details are identical switching to 48 megap you will see more balanced exposure and a massive difference in details so it pays off only when you use Heath Max or Ro Max at night with the night mode enabled it only captures a 12 megapix photos so there is no added value over the 15 Pro Max both photos look identical in terms of colors and details trying the 48 map mode of the 16 Pro Max without night mode versus night mode on others it looks almost identical to the s24 ultra in terms of colors and both look the most natural in the details it's much better than its predecessor but with more noise the pixel has the best balance as always with the s24 ultra being the most oversharpened so overall the 48 mapix is a great addition over last year's model but it's a bummer that it doesn't support full resolution with the night mode like the pixel 9 Pro XL I also tried all other lenses to see if there are any improvements in the morning I didn't spot any differences the photos look the same in everything either in the colors the level of detail or the HDR performance but rarely I might see a small difference in the wide balance with the 16 Pro Max leaning towards cooler tones at night the same story repeats itself the photos look identical in pretty much everything except in one specific scenario when I captured a photo of this red sign the 16 Pro Max made it look more even than the rest of the phones switching to the telephoto I'm not sure why the iPhones produced faded images and it didn't only happen once but that's the case with all the photos I took and the results are exactly the same as expected moving to the front camera there are zero improvements as well it has the same colors details and the field of view and the same applies to night selfies so overall in the photos the only difference is the better details of the new 48 map Ultra wide only when you activate Heath Max or raw Max without using the night mode to capture the full resolution while at 12 map you get the same results as the 15 Pro Max with that said let's take a look at the new photographic Styles previously we had four presets to choose from with the ability to adjust the tone which is the contrast or the warmth which is the wide balance with the 16 Pro Max it's different you get a two AIS graph when you move the dot up or down it adjusts the tone same as before but when you move it left or right it adjusts the color saturation and a sort of the wide balance like before plus it got a third layer which is the pallets this one gives a different look to the image as if you are adding a filter scrolling to the left will take you to the undertones category which includes five different options while scrolling to the right will take you to the mood category and this one includes nine different palettes to choose from lastly you get a slider to adjust the palette intensity honestly I found it a bit confusing at first so I don't think a lot of people will use it but what I like is the ability to change the photographic style in the photos app regardless which one you opted for while taking the shot which is nice so let me end this chapter by talking about the differences I spotted in videos the first one is the higher exposure of the 16 Pro Max when compared to its predecessor the second difference is the warmer tone of the 15 Pro Max's telephoto lens either way the differences are minor and the Apple didn't bring anything new to the table like the 8K resolution of the s24 ultra and the pixel 9 Pro XL the front camera videos of the 16 Pro Max have better HDR as it keeps the subject better exposed in challenging conditions unlike the the dark exposure of the 15 Pro Max as shown in this example in contrast the Night videos look exactly the same in everything either in the colors the stabilization details exposure or the level of noise so the differences are only visible in morning videos so that's everything new in the camera in my opinion for average consumers I don't think any of the new features will make a big difference if you already own last year's model but if you are a content creator or vlogger who rely on the phone you might find the 4K 120 FPS audio mix and photographic styles to be helpful features in your workflow for the network speed Apple used a newer modem that also supports Wi-Fi 7 from my testing on 5G I found the 15 Pro Max to be slightly faster in the download speed while the 16 Pro Max has better upload speed when it comes to Wi-Fi I have a Wi-Fi 6 router so I won't be able to test how it performs on Wi-Fi 7 and in this case the numbers were almost identical so you might only see an improvement with Wi-Fi 7 routers but other than this it's about the same now let's talk about Apple intelligence for a minute it's not here yet but I tried some of the new features on iOS 18.1 beta do you really trust that Apple's new smart features will be any good honestly I don't take the new cleanup feature as an example it uses the same old technology Google released 4 years ago with magic eraser which doesn't support generative fill so the results coming out of it are not great the writing tools are not new to the market plus it only supports English for now which is very limited not to mention that the release cycle is too long it will come to the US in October then to five more countries in December and God knows when it will be released to the rest of the world or if the EU will even get it so it's a kind of mess plus the 15 Pro Models will also get apple intelligence so I'm not really excited about it but I will wait for the official release to do more comparisons and see if it's any good overall Apple linked the iPhone 16 launch with an unfinished product and that had a negative impact on how people see the new models so that's pretty much it for today that was my review for the 16 Pro Max based on what you have seen do you agree with me that it's better to stick with your 15 Pro Max or do you think it's worth the upgrade please let me know in the comments what do you think but for now thanks so much for watching and see you in the next video
