The iPhone 12 Pro Max is a beast of a smartphone with a massive 6.7-inch display, but this year, perhaps more than ever before, the Max is the best iPhone Apple has to offer.
For
Gorgeous redesign
Versatile and improved cameras
Solid battery life
Advanced LiDAR technology
Extensive 5G support
Against
60Hz Display
Expensive starting price
Charger not included
At its core the iPhone 12 Pro Max, like all the phones in the iPhone 12 family (the iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Mini), has a bunch of things going for it like a new flat-sided design reminiscent of the iPhone 5 and iPad Pro. It has support for 5G, an OLED screen with support for HDR, a ceramic shield covering, an A14 Bionic processor, support for MagSafe wireless charging and it can be submerged to a depth of 6 meters for up to 30 minutes.
Starting price of $1,099 (£1,099, AU$1,849), or a hundred dollars more than the iPhone 12 Pro, this is the question: Are camera upgrades on the 12 Pro Max worth the extra money? The short answer is yes, but not just because of the camera.
If you want the largest screen on any iPhone ever made, the 12 Pro Max is worth the price. If you value having the longest battery life on any iPhone 12, the 12 Pro Max seems like an obvious choice. And yes, if you want to get every last drop of image quality out of your photos and videos, then the iPhone 12 Pro Max is definitely worth it.
The iPhone 12 Pro Max gets the same overall redesign as the rest of the iPhone 12 lineup, which I said in my review of the iPhone 12 “is Apple reclaiming its hardware design identity, and I love it.”
If the new squared-off and boxy redesign was going to be problematic for any of the iPhone 12 models, it would be the iPhone 12 Pro Max given its large 6.7-inch display. It’s a big, heavy smartphone. The hard edges remain comfortable and despite the added thickness, it felt even better with the Apple leather case on it.
All four phones have a faster f1.6 aperture lens on the main wide angle camera. That said, the wide-angle camera on the 12 Pro Max is different, which I’ll get to in a moment. The 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max also have a lidar sensor, which helps with autofocus in low-light for photos, video and slow motion as well as AR apps. Last, both the 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max have a third rear camera with a telephoto lens, but the lens on the 12 Pro Max is longer than the one on the 12 Pro.
At a 65-millimeter equivalent, the new telephoto lens on the 12 Pro Max has a 2.5x optical zoom. Compare that to the 52-millimeter equivalent telephoto lens on the 12 Pro, which has a 2x optical zoom. And that 0.5x extra goes a long way. It’s definitely nowhere close to the 5x optical zoom on the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra.
The iPhone 12 Pro Max packs the largest battery of any of the iPhone 12 variants at 3,687 mAh, 900mAh more than the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro. While that’s short of the 4,500 mAh and up you see in most Android flagships this year, iPhones have a history of getting by with less, and that’s certainly the case for the iPhone 12 Pro Max.
The latter half of this year has shown that you don’t need to spend over $1,000 to get an excellent smartphone. For around $700, the iPhone 12 mini, Pixel 5, Galaxy S20 FE and OnePlus 8T are all solid smartphones with much to recommend. But that isn’t to say a true flagships shouldn’t exist, and the iPhone 12 Pro Max is proof of that.
The camera experience on the iPhone 12 Pro Max is simply amazing with the new sensor and the introduction of LiDAR giving you the tools to produce some of the best traditional photos and video of any smartphone on the market. That’s before you factor in augmented reality, which should continue to gain ground with Apple developers thanks to the expanded hardware support.
With the A14 Bionic untouched by competitors and the inclusion of broad 5G support, all four of the iPhone 12 models should last for years. But with its vastly superior battery life and more advanced camera system, the iPhone 12 Pro Max will stand the test of time better than the rest.
