iPhone 16e Review. Fair price or price heist? 🦹‍♂️

Over the last few weeks I’ve been testing the iPhone 16e. Using it as my daily driver and living with it to get a clearer sense for how it compares to Apple’s flagship iPhone 16 models. And if it represents good value for money over the now discontinued iPhone SE.

The tl;dr 🍬

• The iPhone 16e has a single 48MP lens with 2x optical zoom, lacking ultra-wide, dedicated telephoto, and macro capabilities. It lacks Cinematic, Action, ProRaw, ProRes, and spatial video recording modes.
• Image quality is great in good light, but slightly grainier in low light due to sensor-shift stabilisation. The front camera has a 12MP upgrade.
• Performance is smooth for gaming and fast everyday performance, comparable to the iPhone 16 Pro Max. It has Apple’s first-ever C1 modem, providing comparable performance to Qualcomm modems, though it lacks mmWave 5G support. Battery life is impressive, lasting two full days of casual use. Multitasking is excellent, and apps resume smoothly.
• Apple Intelligence features include Genmoji, writing tools, notification summaries, and priority notifications. Siri update is planned for later.
• Design is similar to iPhone 14, with a lightweight aluminium frame and squared-off edges, available in black or white. The display is bright and vivid OLED with a 60Hz refresh rate, lacking the 120Hz high refresh rate and always-on display mode of the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max.
• Features include Face ID, a notch for the front camera, and lacks the home button of the iPhone SE. An Action Button replaces the silent/ringer switch, allowing for custom actions. Speaker quality is decent, comparable to those on the iPhone 16 Pro Max. Charging supports slower Qi 1 wireless charging, lacking MagSafe’s convenience and efficiency.

The Full Review 🍭

Design ✨

The iPhone 16e has a very similar design to the iPhone 14. It has a lightweight aluminum frame and it’s slightly more squared off than the iPhone 15 family and the other iPhone 16 models. This is a matter of preference, but I actually really like it. Either go rounded or squared off and commit, I say. It makes for a very clean and crisp look. It’s available in black or white and not the color-infused options of the regular iPhone 16. There’s also no Product RED option this year.

Gone is the home button from the iPhone SE, replaced with a full-screen design with a notch. Not the Dynamic Island. I didn’t really mind the notch found on earlier iPhone models like the iPhone 13 and 14. It’s definitely more noticeable than the Dynamic Island and doesn’t have as much utility. It can’t show timely information or provide quick access to background audio etc. But it does contain the hardware for Face ID, which is a welcome upgrade from the slower, less secure Touch ID home button on the SE.

The display is a bright, vivid OLED display. It gets up to 800 nits in typical lighting conditions and 1,200 nits for HDR content. It has a 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio and very accurate colors. Staple features like True Tone and Night Shift are here. But unfortunately, the display is still 60Hz. It doesn’t get the variable refresh rate technology found on the 16 Pro and Pro Max, meaning you miss out on a 120Hz high refresh rate and you don’t get an always-on display mode either. As a user of 16 Pro Max, this would be a deal breaker for me. But for the audience this phone is aimed at — like upgraders from the iPhone SE, the iPhone 11 or 12 — the display will feel like a massive upgrade.

Apple has added the Action Button to the 16e, replacing the silent/ringer switch and bringing the 16e in line with the rest of the iPhone 16 lineup. I’ll be honest: I rarely use the Action Button. If anything, it just acts as a toggle for turning on silent mode like the switch it replaced. I’ve tried other ways to use the Action Button like activating shortcuts, but I tend to forget. That said, it’s great to have options, and some people really like the Action Button and get a lot of utility out of it.

There are decent speakers on board. I couldn’t discern much difference between them and those found on my iPhone 16 Pro Max. But one thing you won’t find is MagSafe charging. Wireless charging is available but only regular Qi 1 charging. It’s slower and can be annoying to use. You have to place the phone at just the right spot. If it gets knocked out of alignment, charging will be less efficient or stop altogether. It feels like a weird decision for Apple as they make a lot of money on the large MagSafe accessory ecosystem. And MagSafe has been on every iPhone since the iPhone 12. They did have to make cost savings somewhere, but this feels like a poor choice.

Performance ⚡️

On board is Apple’s powerful A18 chip. Though it’s a binned chip with one less GPU core than the iPhone 16 which has 5 GPU cores, it does however share the same 6 CPU cores and 8GB of RAM. In reality, I didn’t notice a huge difference in performance compared to my iPhone 16 Pro Max with its even more powerful A18 Pro chip. Gaming felt smooth, frame rates were high, and I didn’t notice any meaningful differences in day-to-day performance either. It benchmarks higher than the iPhone 15 family, which in itself was already plenty fast. The A18 chip should keep things feeling fast and fluid for years to come.

One thing that is totally new for the iPhone 16e is its modem. It’s the first ever iPhone to feature an Apple-designed modem. Apple calls it the C1 chip. The modem is the part responsible for connecting to cell towers, making calls and, most importantly, internet speeds. When testing the iPhone 16e against the iPhone 16 Pro Max, I noticed no difference in performance at all. That’s a good thing because until now, Apple has been using tried and tested modems from partner/competitor Qualcomm. Apple’s first ever modem provided comparable performance for me. It doesn’t support mmWave 5G, but here in the UK, mmWave isn’t available anyway. In countries where it is available, it’s only accessible in very limited areas of major cities. Definitely not a deal breaker.

Battery performance has been incredible. Apple said that the iPhone 16e gets the best battery life of any iPhone with a 6.1-inch display. In my testing, that claim held up. I was able to get 2 full days of casual use including social media, web browsing, and watching YouTube videos. That compares very similarly to the larger iPhone 16 Pro Max, which has a higher capacity battery. Apple has been able to achieve this thanks to the C1 modem, a denser battery, and other internal space savings.

Thanks to more onboard RAM, multitasking has been excellent. I’ve yet to come across an app that didn’t resume when switching between apps in the app switcher. But thanks to more RAM, Apple Intelligence is available on the iPhone 16e. Features like Genmoji, writing tools, notification summaries, priority notifications, and more are here. Unfortunately, one thing that isn’t is a smarter, more capable Siri. Apple promises that Siri will still get its upgrade but later than planned.

Camera 📸

This is the first new iPhone in a while now to feature a single-lens camera system. It’s a very capable 48-megapixel camera and a huge upgrade over the 12-megapixel camera found on the iPhone SE. Because the lens is so high resolution, it can provide an effective 2x telephoto crop by using the middle 12 megapixels of the sensor. It’s a nice little extra to have. What you won’t find, however, is the ultra-wide lens from the iPhone 16. Nor will you find a dedicated telephoto lens as found on the iPhone 16 Pro.

Being a single-lens system, some features found on other iPhone 16 models are missing. Cinematic mode and action mode for video aren’t available. Nor is macro photography or night mode for portrait photos. Even though there isn’t a ‘macro mode’, you can still get pretty close up to subjects.

There are some other features you don’t get that are exclusive to the 16 Pro like ProRAW photos and ProRes video. These missing features aren’t deal breakers at the £599 price point of the 16e. They’re certainly nice to have but aren’t staple, everyday features. You also won’t be able to record spatial video for Apple’s Vision Pro AR headset. But if somebody is in the position to buy a £3,500 AR headset, are they really buying a budget/midrange iPhone? Probably not.

Some outlets stated that the iPhone 16e has the same camera as the main wide-angle lens found on the iPhone 16. But that’s actually not correct. This is a slightly different sensor. The camera doesn’t have sensor-shift stabilization and relies on optical image stabilization instead. It means that low-light performance isn’t quite as good as the rest of the iPhone 16 family and is a bit grainier. Thanks to the A18 chip and its advanced image signal processor, performance does seem to be pretty comparable to the regular iPhone 16 in good lighting. I was impressed with the quality of both photos and videos and think the target market for this iPhone will be too.

Wrapping Up 🌯

So should you buy the iPhone 16e? I think if you’re upgrading from an older iPhone model like the iPhone SE, the iPhone 11, or iPhone 12, it might make sense. It’s less expensive than the iPhone 15, which is still on sale, and yet has a more powerful processor and supports Apple Intelligence. It’s a way to get access to Apple’s latest software features for the least amount of money — at least directly from Apple.

You might be able to find a 15 Pro for less as a refurbished model. But if you want a brand new iPhone and want to keep costs somewhat reasonable, the 16e is a balanced choice. The feature set overall is pretty good, but I do think the price is just a shade too high. Considering some of the omissions like MagSafe, chip binning, and fewer camera features, I would have liked to see this phone priced at £499/$499. That said, we should start to see deals from third-party retailers pretty soon for some modest savings.

Overall, this is a really good iPhone and a great midrange option. It just isn’t quite at the right price point to be truly exceptional value.