iPhone 14 Pro & iPhone 14 Pro Max Review: The Verdict
The iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max are great phones. On the standard metrics of camera, battery, performance, and display, they're hard to fault, even if battery life is a small step back from last year. At the same time, the big new features like the dynamic island and always-on display feel a little first generation, despite their promise.
What we love
- Fantastic, versatile cameras
- Great battery on the Pro Max
- Dynamic island is really neat
What could be improved
- Expensive
- Battery is a step back from last year
- Always-on display can't be interacted with
The essentials
- Performance: Best you can get on a phone.
- Battery: The iPhone 14 Pro Max has the best battery we've tested on a phone this year, hitting around seven hours of screen time. That's easily over a full day. The standard iPhone 14 Pro isn't quite as good, measuring in at around four-and-a-half hours of screen time per charge. That should still get you through a day, but without much of a buffer.
- Screen: Lovely as usual, no complaints. The dynamic island is charming.
- Camera: Great! While the rear cameras aren't a massive step up in quality over last year, the iPhone 14 Pro family benefits from a little extra versatility that photographers are sure to appreciate. The selfie camera gets a big improvement, however.
The iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro Max take their best ideas from the Apple Watch.
In a way, we've gone full circle. The Apple Watch all but started as a tiny iPhone, and now Apple is sizing up some of those small ideas for big displays.
The always-on display and dynamic island can be traced back to ideas Apple first implemented with Apple Watch, and feed into the idea of ambient computing. The ability to do more with your iPhone while interacting with it less - just like on your Watch.
These new features still feel very first generation, but they're a fascinating look at what's to come.
No man is an island, but your next iPhone just might be
The always-on display and dynamic island are where the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max are at their most ambitious. Big swings that create changes in how you use your iPhone.
Let's start with the always-on display. We've been seeing always-on displays in the Android world for almost a decade now, but Apple's approach is a little more sophisticated. Instead of offering up a stripped-down black and white experience, you get your lock screen, just dimmer. You can still see your wallpaper, your widgets, and your notifications. It's almost exactly how the Apple Watch always-on display works, if you've used one.
Apple's take on the always-on display has its pros and cons. It's undeniably richer than anything we've seen before, but it can also be a bit distracting. When using a bright wallpaper, I found I had to flip the iPhone to stop me from constantly assuming I had a notification, which ultimately defeats the point of an always-on display. I found swapping to a darker wallpaper helped mitigate this issue.
Here's the always-on display dimmed:
And here's it lit up:
The always-on display ties in with the new lock screen functionality in iOS 16. As part of the changes, you can now put widgets - directly inspired by the Apple Watch's complications - on the lock screen. These are all still present when on the always-on display, which is great, if you're like me and constantly fret about the UV index.
While having more freedom over your lock screen is great, I want more. Right now, widgets just tend to act as shortcuts to their respective apps; I want them to be interactive. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to tick off a reminder on my lock screen without needing to open the app. I'd also love a second row of widgets - especially on a device as big as the iPhone 14 Pro Max.
Meanwhile, the dynamic island is the pill-shaped cut-out sitting at the top of the display, replacing the notch. It houses the selfie camera and sensors needed for Face ID, but also becomes part of the user interface, expanding and contracting as needed to highlight extra information.
Some of this is superficial. There are charming animations for day-to-day tasks like authenticating an app with Face ID, toggling your phone from silent to loud, and connecting your phone to power. It's all very snazzy, but doesn't really change the iPhone experience.
The real value of the dynamic island lies in that it can foreground background tasks. It's a persistent user interface element that lets you know what else is going on in your iPhone. For example, it will show you album art and a waveform when you're listening to music. Long pressing the island will give you basic playback controls, while tapping it will take you into the app. Once again, this isn't dissimilar to how some of the complications work on the Apple Watch, where you can foreground elements like music and timers right on your watch face.
Timers can also be displayed in the island, as can navigation. If you've got two islandable activities going at once, one will pop off into its own little bubble. But at present, this is about all the island can do. Developers will be able to better support it in iOS 16.1, where apps like Uber will be able to expose useful information like how until your ride arrives. Of course, it could still take a bit of time until the dynamic island is a feature that's universally supported.
On a more pedantic front, the slightly lower positioning of the dynamic island means some apps need updates to account for it. While this hasn't created any usability issues, it can create some slight visual quirks in apps like TikTok.
While the always-on display and dynamic island are in their infancy, they signal a change in how Apple is thinking about iPhone. Until now, you largely had to go into an app to do something. Dynamic island makes for leaner multitasking, while the always-on lock screen can expose data like your next calendar appointment without even needing to tap your phone. It makes the iPhone feel more interconnected, and I'm excited to see the state of these features one year down the line.
It's not the number of megapixels, it's what you do with them
The iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max benefit from Apple's most significant camera upgrade in years. Finally moving beyond 12MP, the pair now both have a 48MP primary lens.
Of course, megapixels alone don't equate to photo quality. It's about what you do with them. For the most part, you'll still be taking 12MP images with the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, with the pair using the larger sensor to capture a brighter image rather than a bigger image.
This naturally improves low light performance, and means you don't need to rely on night mode as much to get bright photos in dark environments. And when you need night mode, exposure times tend to be shorter, which helps prevent motion blur. While it's not necessarily a massive step up in overall quality over last year, you can notice the improved brightness.
Here's a photo from the iPhone 13 Pro Max:
And here's a photo from the iPhone 14 Pro Max:
There are however times you can actually take a big picture: switching on ProRAW lets you take full-size 48MP photos in an uncompressed format. This gives you more potential for editing, especially when it comes to cropping down a shot. 48MP photos have a stupid amount of detail, so you can punch in quite a bit before losing any perceptible quality.
Here’s a 100% crop of a 12MP image:
And here's a 100% crop of a 48MP image:
Of course, shooting 48MP images will burn through storage space quickly. Photos tend to be somewhere between 60MB and 80MB a shot. That 1TB model is making a bit more sense now, hey? You also can't use night mode if you're taking a 48MP photo, and the photos themselves take just a little longer to snap.
The 48MP lens also works as a 2x zoom lens, thanks to the amount of data it can capture. This gives you an extra step of optical magnification to play with, making the iPhone 14 Pro family that little bit more versatile.
Here's a zoom comparison:
Moving to a 48MP primary lens has resulted in a few trade-offs. The biggest is that you can no longer get as close to a subject as you could with last year's models. Macro mode turns on earlier, and if you switch it off, you can't focus. Macro mode is still great, but you lose the lovely shallow depth of field you get from the primary lens.
Here's how close I could get with the iPhone 13 Pro Max primary lens:
And here's how close I could get with the iPhone 14 Pro Max:
The iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max can occasionally also be a little aggressive with sharpening. Again, this wasn't an issue I had last year. It's easy enough to fix with Apple's integrated editing tools, however.
Improvements to the telephoto and ultra-wide lens are less significant this year. Apple says both offer better low light performance, but this is far more apparent with the ultra-wide.
Here's an ultra-wide photo from the iPhone 13 Pro Max:
And here's an ultra-wide photo from the iPhone 14 Pro Max:
Here's a telephoto shot from the iPhone 13 Pro Max:
And here's a telephoto shot from the iPhone 14 Pro Max:
When it comes to more tangible improvements, the new selfie camera offers the biggest step up between generations. It has a faster aperture and autofocus, with the changes resulting in sharper images, more natural skin tones, and better dynamic range.
Here’s a selfie from the iPhone 13 Pro Max:
And here's one from the iPhone 14 Pro Max:
The entire iPhone 14 family benefit from the same selfie camera.
Overall, the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max cameras are great, but the improvements aren't quite linear. You gain some, you lose some. The real benefit of moving to the 48MP is the added versatility you get from 2x zoom and 48MP RAW images.
One area where the iPhone 14 Pro family are hard to fault is video performance: they're still best in class. There's also a new action mode for stabilising footage. It works pretty well, but it needs a solid amount of light. An overcast Sydney morning was enough to impede the quality when filming indoors.
The price of being always on
The iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max both represent a small step backward in terms of battery life. In my testing, the standard iPhone 14 Pro managed to get around 4.5 hours of screen time per charge with 5G on, while last year, it was more consistently getting around five. Even though that's a small change, anecdotally, I've seen the 20% warning fire up more on the iPhone 14 Pro than I did on the iPhone 13 Pro. It's still enough for a full day of use, but moderate to heavy users won't have much of a buffer at the end of the day.
The iPhone 14 Pro Max has a more robust battery, where it's easy to get around seven hours of screen time per charge with 5G on. It's the best battery of any phone I've tested this year, but still a step down from last year, where we were easily getting around eight.
The always-on display seems to be contributing factor, and I've managed to get a little more screen time by setting my lock screen to be a black image. Since the iPhone 14 Pro pair have OLED displays, individual pixels don't light unless they're being used. As such, a black lock screen reduces the amount of pixels being used to keep it perpetually on. It would have been nice if Apple introduced something similar as a feature - the option to have a black always-on display, but your actual colour lock screen when you interact with it.
Overall performance is unsurprisingly excellent. I haven't had a single issue with either phone. On paper, the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max are the fastest phones you can get, and the day-to-day experience holds up to that claim.
Features you hope you won't need
The iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max also boast a couple of features you'll hope you won't need.
Firstly, there's Emergency SOS via satellite, which won't work in Australia at launch. If you don't have mobile coverage or WiFi, Emergency SOS via satellite can fall back to satellite connectivity to get in touch with emergency services in the case, of well, an emergency. This feature will initially only be available in the US and Canada, but iPhone 14 models sold in Australia still support it.
Given how vast Australia is, this feature could be a game changer for those who live in areas without reliable mobile coverage. Fingers crossed Apple works out a way to bring this here sooner rather than later.
Secondly, there's crash detection. This does work in Australia, but I wasn't going to crash my car for the sake of a review. As with the new Apple Watch, the entire iPhone 14 family can call emergency services if you're in a car accident.
iPhone 14 Pro & iPhone 14 Pro Max - Final Thoughts
The iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max are ambitious devices that feel like a soft reset of the iPhone. They're not quite the new slate that the iPhone X represented five years ago, but they nonetheless lay the foundations for what's to come. An iPhone that does more for you while asking less.
On a basic level, they're great phones with excellent cameras and lovely displays. The iPhone 14 Pro Max is a battery beast. It just becomes a question of whether you want to live on the bleeding edge as an early adopter, or wait until next year when the big new features will inevitably be a little more polished. Do you want the new shiny now in exchange for a few teething issues, or do you want to wait until the kinks are worked out and there's wider developer support?
There's no one single answer, and it's further complicated given the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max are some of the most expensive phones you can buy. I don't think anyone would regret buying either phone now - again, they're great - but Apple's history has consistently shown us its big new ideas are always so much better the second time around. Just like with the Apple Watch.
iPhone 14 Pro & iPhone 14 Pro Max camera samples
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