After two months of thorough testing, I’ve completed an in-depth review of the iPhone 16 Pro Max. I’ve distilled my opinions into five key areas: Design, Display, Cameras, Performance, and Software. This review isn’t designed to be a comparison of the iPhone 16 Pro Max to last year’s model. Too many reviews, particularly from major outlets, overly emphasise this year’s hardware versus last year’s. While there absolutely is a place for that, most people aren’t annual upgraders. I’ve reviewed the device on its own merits where possible, making comparisons to last year only where necessary. Let’s dive in 👇
Design📱
Let’s get the obvious out of the way. The iPhone 16 Pro Max is a beautiful phone. It’s also a very large phone. It has the largest display ever on an iPhone at 6.9 inches with its smaller sibling, the iPhone 16 Pro, featuring a 6.3 inch display. That said it isn’t the heaviest iPhone with previous models such as the iPhone 14 Pro Max weighing more. That’s because Apple has continued to build its 2024 flagships with titanium and glass. Titanium is lighter than the stainless steel found on many recent models while retaining its strength and corrosion resistance.
This year, Apple has enhanced the Titanium finish to have a more satin-like appearance. It’s a little bit shinier than the iPhone 15 Pro Max, but it’s by no means glossy. The edges of the phone do, however, remain a fingerprint magnet. The rear glass retains its matte satin glass, which is much more resistant to fingerprints. Both materials feel premium and luxurious in hand. The front of the phone uses a special type of glass, the latest version of what Apple calls ‘Ceramic Shield.’ Apple states that it’s the toughest glass in a smartphone. While I didn’t drop test the phone, it’s useful to be aware that the glass isn’t more resistant to scratches than previous models (nor does Apple claim otherwise). That said, it should hold up better to drops and impacts than any iPhone that came before it.
The volume buttons feel tactile with a satisfying click, as do the power button and customisable action button. They’re well placed and easy to access. This year Apple has added a new button called ‘Camera Control’. This button is special. It’s coated with sapphire crystal and is touch sensitive. We’ll get on to its functionality later in the review. However I’ve found that it doesn’t feel satisfying to press. It’s a bit too stiff and that has consequences for its functionality. But again…we’ll get to that. The other thing I’ll say about the design of the camera control is that it is a bit awkwardly placed. It works well for landscape but it’s not as ideal when holding the phone in portrait. That said I’m not sure Apple could have placed it anywhere else. Any higher and it would have been inaccessible in landscape. Any lower and it would have been nigh impossible to use in portrait. It’s very much a compromise.
On the back of the phone, Apple has built in magnets and a charging coil to support its proprietary ecosystem of MagSafe accessories. MagSafe enables seamless wireless charging by perfectly aligning the phone to supported wireless charging pucks. You can also wirelessly charge the phone using Qi or Qi2 wireless chargers. Though being an open standard and not proprietary, not all Qi chargers will contain magnets. MagSafe however works very well and is delightful to use. It’s far less fiddly than a cable. Though it’s important to note that wireless charging has been shown to degrade the health of your phones battery quicker than charging with a cable. Charging with a cable while less convenient and more fiddly, is more efficient in terms of power consumption. It also charges your phone faster and is better at heat dissipation. It’s for you to decide between convenience or efficiency. I tend to opt for the former.
Other key design features include a water and dust proof design, a USB-C port for charging with USB 3 transfer speeds, a raised camera bump with multiple cameras and sensors, and a pill-shaped cutout on the display known as Dynamic Island. The camera bump does cause the phone to rock and wobble on a flat surface though if like me you use a case, that becomes a non-issue. The Dynamic Island while not new for this year, remains a clever and delightful hybrid of software and hardware. More on that in a moment.
Overall the design is beautiful, premium and looks and feels great. The phone looks mostly similar to the iPhone 12 through 15 but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It might not be ‘exciting’ but its stood the test of time for a reason. If you’re new to this design and coming from an older model, I think you’ll love it. If like me you enjoy the smoother, rounder edges of the iPhone 11 series, you’ll adapt to this boxier design quickly. You might just prefer to use a case to soften it a little.
Display 📲
The iPhone 16 Pro Max has the best display ever in an iPhone. It’s the largest and has the slimmest bezels. Meaning you get more viewable screen areas than any previous iPhone. It can get incredibly bright with a peak brightness of 2000 nits, ideal for outdoors conditions. In a first however for any iPhone, the display can also drop down to as little as 1 nit. This is great for using the device in a dark room and reducing eye strain. In addition to getting both super bright and nice and dim, the display also has a 2,000,000 to 1 contrast ratio thanks to OLED technology. That means you get deep inky blacks, the brightest whites and vivid colour accuracy. Apps, Photos and Videos all look sensational on this display.
Two other important display features to talk about include ProMotion and Always-On technology. ProMotion allows the display to refresh at a rate of 120 times per second (120hz). It means scrolling is incredibly smooth and interactions with the touch surface feel fast and fluid. Always-On allows the display to stay illuminated at all times when locked. It means you can always your phones lock screen wallpaper, time and unread notifications. You can also customise it to add widgets or even turn off some of these elements. Both ProMotion and Always-On are fully customisable and can be turned off. Personally I love both of these features and they make for a fantastic user experience. They’re on by default and if you haven’t owned an iPhone with these features before, you’ll notice them immediately.
One final display feature to note is the aforementioned Dynamic Island. It’s the little pill-shaped cut-out surrounding the selfie camera and Face ID sensors. On older models, Apple used to hide these sensors and cameras in a notch-shaped display cut-out. But since the iPhone 14, Apple has shrunk this down into a pill. What’s interesting about the pill, however, is that it can expand using software to show useful, contextually specific information. Like how long is left on a timer or when your Uber is due to arrive. It can also be used to quickly switch between apps that are running in the background. Again, this isn’t new for the iPhone 16 Pro Max, but it remains a fantastic feature and a nice upgrade if you haven’t experienced it before.
Cameras 📸
There are four cameras on the iPhone 16 Pro Max. Each with a wide array of features. So I’m going to break them down one by one and outline some key features.
Fusion Camera
Regarded as the ‘main camera’, the Fusion Camera as Apple now calls it, is the highest quality camera on the iPhone 16 Pro Max. It has a ƒ/1.78 aperture and a 48 megapixel sensor. It’s a similar sensor as introduced in the iPhone 15 Pro Max but can capture images more quickly Apple claims. I couldn’t notice a meaningful difference in capture speed. The name ‘fusion’ refers to the ability to do a 2x crop in with the lens, creating a full 12 megapixel image using the middle of the sensor. In simpler terms, it provides the same image resolution at 2x as the main camera of older iPhone models like the 13 Pro Max could at 1x.
By default, the main camera shoots in a balanced format to save storage by capturing 24 megapixel images. For the best image quality, you can shoot in ProRaw. When combined with the Fusion camera, you get a full 48 megapixel image. ProRaw images have much larger file sizes but really do look better. You can appreciate the higher quality when zooming in on the images. Detail and image quality is retained as you pinch to zoom on these images in your camera roll. You probably shouldn’t shoot in this format all of the time as capture times are slower and the files are larger. But for special shots or for creative work, this is the way to go.
I’ve been really impressed with the images coming out of this sensor. They look sharp and detailed and take full advantage of the processing capability of the 16 Pro Max. Features like Apple’s 2nd generation sensor-shift image stabilisation and HDR 5 image processing, create pleasing, sharable images. To some, the images might look a little over processed using the default camera settings. But you can customise the processing of the images using the built in photographic styles. More on that later. Overall the main camera is killer and represents a big upgrade for users of iPhone 13 Pro users or prior.
Ultra Wide Camera
This year Apple has overhauled the Ultra Wide camera. It’s been upgraded from a 12 megapixel sensor to a 48 megapixel sensor. It retains an ƒ/2.2 aperture as recent iPhone models. But the increased resolution makes for a substantial upgrade to image quality. Particularly when capturing in ProRaw. You can notice increased image clarity even with the default settings. But using ProRaw gets the most out of the sensor. Quality drops somewhat in low light but images are still very usable.
Apple’s Ultra Wide cameras have a 0.5x crop compared to the iPhone’s main camera. As the name implies, the camera enables you to fit so much more in the frame. For a few years now the Ultra Wide camera has been the weakest camera. But this year that’s no longer the case. In fact the new Ultra Wide also enabled much higher quality, 48 megapixel macro photography. Meaning you can capture extreme close up shots in fantastic detail. I’ve been blown away with the increase in quality year over year. If you love wider shots or extreme close ups, this represents a really nice upgrade. Especially for stills.
Telephoto Camera
On the iPhone 16 Pro Max and iPhone 16 Pro, Apple includes a 5x telephoto lens that uses four folded mirrors to extend the light’s path to the camera sensor. This design allows for a longer optical zoom range without requiring a large lens, which would not be practical for a smartphone. It’s called a tetra-prism and it’s a fantastic bit of engineering. I’ve been really impressed by the images I’ve been able to capture with the 5x lens. It’s far more useful in my opinion than the 3x and 2x optical zoom of previous iPhone models. Especially as you can now get full 12 megapixel 2x image on the fusion camera.
One benefit of optical zoom is that it offers better image quality compared to digital zoom, but this lens has its limits. The Telephoto camera is only 12 megapixels, much lower than the 48-megapixel Fusion and Ultra Wide cameras. This means you’ll see less detail and sharpness with the Telephoto. Additionally, it has the smallest aperture at ƒ/2.8, resulting in less detail and more noise in low light. A smaller aperture captures less light, affecting image quality.
Front Camera
The front facing camera remains largely unchanged versus the last couple of generations of iPhone. But will still represent a nice upgrade for iPhone 13 owners and prior. It uses a 12 megapixel sensor with a pretty wide aperture of ƒ/1.9. Although the least impressive sensor from a technical point of view, it does support most of Apple’s latest image processing features such as HDR 5, ProRaw and Apple’s new, second generation photographic styles.
For the average user, they’ll be very happy with this camera for selfies, live videos, blogging and more. It would be nice if the sensor was a touch wider. Though that sometimes comes at the expense of image distortion. This lens already suffers with some distortion unfortunately. That isn’t an issue unique to the iPhone however. The space limitations of smartphones mean that manufacturers tend to deprioritise the front camera and use smaller lenses with smaller sensors. They make faces look narrower than they really are. It’s true that you really do look better in the mirror! Always good to know if a selfie has knocked your self esteem down a peg or two.
Camera Control
One of the big headline features for this year is Apple’s shiny new button. The Camera Control. Located on the right side of the device, it provides instant access to the camera no matter what app you’re in. A quick press, and you’re immediately taken to your camera app of choice. In theory, it sounds really useful. And I think it does have some value. But I have to be honest. This new button needs work. It’s not the idea but rather the execution that feels flawed.
The first issue with Camera Control is just taking a photo. The button feels too firm. And when you press it your hand shakes a bit. It means lining up the perfect shot can be scuppered by the force of pressing down on the button. It feels much firmer than the other physical buttons on the iPhone 16 Pro Max. And that’s a problem. I do understand why Apple made it firmer, to avoid inadvertent presses that might you out of an app and into the camera unintentionally. But it creates a problem in performing the action it’s intended to solve. Taking a photo!
The second issue with Camera Control is its double tap gesture. By doing a light double tap on the button you can bring up a list of controls. These include things like exposure, zoom, aperture, photographic styles and more. The problem is that this gesture is really finicky. It isn’t easy to invoke consistently. Gauging the right amount of pressure to use makes it too slow to switch between features. It’s far quicker to just use the on screen touch controls which kind of defeats the purpose. It’s intended to make it quicker to get to the camera and the various built in controls. In reality it makes the problem it tries to solve worse, not better.
As mentioned earlier in the review, the placement of the button isn’t ideal. But it’s probably the best compromise Apple could have come to. But when combined with the clunky gestures and additional force to press it, I can’t help but feel like Camera Control is a solution in search of a problem. It’s a rare miss for Apple. I suspect we’ll see big improvements to it in time. Or perhaps its functionality will be replaced and get re-mapped to something else. We already know you’ll be able to use it to invoke some upcoming Apple Intelligence features. Only time will tell! There are a few ways to make Camera Control a bit easier to use and I’ve made an Instagram Reel that explains how.
Other Photography Features
The iPhone 16 Pro Max has a ‘Photonic Engine’. It’s basically a processing pipeline for every photo or video captured on your iPhone. And one major upgrade this year takes full advantage of that processing pipeline. The new second generation photographic styles. Unlike simple filters, these styles change how the image is processed. You can set a default style or easily switch between them. Apple offers 14 unique styles (15 including the default), each categorised by moods and undertones. Moods give a dramatic look, while undertones affect skin tones. You can also customise styles by adjusting their tone, colour, and palette, and can tweak the processing amount for a subtler effect. It’s easy to reset the styles back to their defaults too. I really appreciated this set of features. Apple’s default camera processing tends to reduce highlights and shadows. But photographic styles let you put them back in. You can even re-process an image with a style after it’s captured. Meaning you don’t need to worry if you shot an image in the wrong style. In previous Pro iPhone models you’d have been out of luck.
Returning features this year include Portrait mode for creating images with a simulated background blur, Live Photos for capturing ‘moving photos’, a front facing ‘Retina Flash’ that uses the display to light up selfies and more. But one feature that is totally new are spatial photos. You can now capture 3D photos that can be viewed on Apple Vision Pro and other AR headsets. I’m one on a small number of Vision Pro owners and these images look spectacular. The 3D effect is very convincing. Though you won’t be able to appreciate this on your iPhone. Still…it can’t hurt to capture the odd image in spatial for when Apple’s AR products come down in price and the category expands into slimmer, lighter models.
Video Recording
The iPhone has long been known for its excellent video recording, and Apple has improved it even more this year. You can record in Dolby Vision at up to 4K resolution, or choose lower options like 1080p or 720p. There’s also an ‘Action Mode’ for better stability, useful for activities like mountain biking. Additionally, ‘Cinematic Mode’ allows you to create a blurred background effect, similar to portrait mode in photos. In genera I’ve been extremely pleased with the video quality of the iPhone 16 Pro Max. Apple is clearly invested in making iPhone videography the best it can possibly be.
One useful improvement for even the most casual user is Audio Mix. It allows you to adjust how voices sound in videos recorded on your iPhone. Cinematic captures all nearby voices and places them in front of you, like in a movie. Studio makes it sound like you’re recording a podcast, as if the microphones are right by your mouth. In-frame only captures voices that the camera is pointed at. This takes advantage of the four high-quality microphones built into the 16 Pro Max. It performs impressively well, and I didn’t expect this feature to be so effective. Even better is that you can change mix after you capture your video! There are however some other new video features geared more towards creative professionals…
Now you can record video in 4K at 120 frames per second. This results in ultra smooth video when played back at regular speed. And incredibly detailed videos when used in slow motion. What’s more these 120 FPS videos can be captured in ProRes or in Dolby Vision. The former requires your phone to be connected to external storage because the files are monstrous in size. Though in fairness the quality of these videos is exceptional. I couldn’t upload an example to the site because even a few mere seconds of video in this format are several gigabytes in size. This is a great option to have but is most definitely not something for the average user.
Another option with video (as was the case on the 15 Pro Max) is the ability to record videos in log format. This is a raw capture format with virtually zero image processing. It’s best for video editors that want the most flexibility to customise the look and feel of a video in a really granular way. It’s most definitely a ‘pro feature’ and not one I’d recommend for typical use cases. Combined with ProRes, these features are enabling people to make full length movies with iPhone. In actual fact the upcoming horror blockbuster, 28 years later, was shot entirely on iPhone. Needless to say, the iPhone 16 Pro Max will be more than capable of shooting family videos, recording concerts, vlogging and more.
Performance
The iPhone 16 Pro Max is a powerhouse. It sports Apple’s latest chip, the A18 Pro. Apple has equipped it with 8GB of RAM, the most ever on an iPhone. It also increased the memory bandwidth to enable that RAM to be accessed more quickly. Apple also improved the neural engine, making it faster. These upgrades are mostly in service of AI and Apple’s upcoming ‘Apple Intelligence’ features. But they do of course benefit day to day performance too. But that isn’t where the story ends.
The A18 Pro has 6 CPU cores and 6 GPU cores. They’re made using second generation 3nm transistors. In layman terms the chip is more powerful while also being more power efficient. In benchmarks and real world testing, this is without question the most powerful smartphone chip in the world right now. Apps load instantly and everything you do feels responsive. And Apple has also improved its hardware accelerated ray tracing for even better graphics and gaming performance. If you don’t know what ray tracing is, it basically reproduces light and shadow in games in a realistic way. Reflections behave how they would in real life and light bounces off of objects as your eyes would expect it to. The chip is so powerful you can even play console quality games on your iPhone, like Resident Evil 4 remake, natively.
Along with a powerful processor, is a beefier battery and the largest battery ever in an iPhone. Apple claims that you’ll get four more hours of video playback than the iPhone 15 Pro Max. In my testing battery life has been extraordinary. With casual use I can easily make it through two days of use. With more intensive use, like when testing out the cameras and gaming performance for this review, I was able to get through a full day with 20-30% to spare. I’m surprised Apple didn’t talk up this point more when they announced the iPhone 16 Pro Max. The upgrade in battery life feels substantial and contributes to excellent overall performance. Of course we can’t talk about performance without going deeper on Apple Intelligence. That brings us to the last portion of this review.
Software
Apple’s software upgrades are usually similar for both new iPhone owners and those who have iPhones from five years ago. That changed this year. Only Apple’s latest iPhone 16 and 16 Pro range and last year’s iPhone 15 Pro support Apple Intelligence. Why? The reason is simple. RAM. Artificial Intelligence models require plenty of it. And Apple couldn’t deliver the experience it wants to provide to customers on older iPhone models with smaller amounts of slower RAM with less memory bandwidth
What makes it difficult to talk about software in this review is a rather curious decision by Apple. They described the iPhone 16 Pro Max as the first iPhone designed from the ground up for Apple Intelligence. But shipped it without Apple Intelligence. Apple promises that Apple Intelligence is coming in future software updates with a staggered release cycle. Meaning some features will arrive first with others arriving later in subsequent updates. The problem is that it means I can’t review it. Apple Intelligence doesn’t officially arrive in the UK until December. I could try it out in beta. But it wouldn’t be fair to review a product feature that isn’t finished yet.
In the absence of Apple Intelligence, there’s not much to discuss about software. The iPhone 16 Pro Max comes with iOS 18, which you may already know. For those not upgrading, iOS 18 is even available on older models like the iPhone XS and XR from 2018. Apple Intelligence should be reviewed properly, but until it’s out of beta, I won’t share my opinion. A product should be reviewed only when Apple considers it finished. Even though Apple announced its AI features before the 16 Pro Max, their marketing is a bit misleading. Calling it the first iPhone designed for AI while shipping it without AI is an own goal. It isn’t a reflection on how fantastic the overall package is. But it does reflect badly on the marketing strategy. Investor pressure is probably…or at least partially to blame.
Summary
Overall, the iPhone 16 Pro Max is a terrific experience. It sports a beautiful, iconic design. The best processor, the best performance, and the longest battery life of any smartphone. It adds innovative new features for photography and video recording. And it has bold, if not finished, new ideas like Camera Control. Eventually, these new ideas will be fleshed out, refined, and hopefully, be transformed into something genuinely useful. But for now, there’s some work to do. And who knows how Apple Intelligence might change the ownership experience 6 months from now? But you have to look at the product for what it is today. It’s a great iPhone, a modest upgrade from the iPhone 15 Pro Max. A big upgrade for owners of a 13 Pro Max or older. And it’s the best smartphone in the world right now.
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