Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max review: super-sized and underbaked

The iPhone 16 Pro Max feels like a very iterative phone out of the gate. It gets very similar camera specs as the 15 Pro Max, runs with shiny new software that the 15 Pro Max now also runs, and it doesn't deliver a fully realized version of Apple's new iOS 18 with Apple Intelligence, giving Google, Samsung, and other Android makers a big lead on smartphone AI.

There are a few ways you'll be able to spot the new iPhone 16 Pro Max in a crowd. A new Action Button on the bottom right side adds welcome quick access to the camera, as well as touch control for zoom and in-camera tools. The phone's screen is also more immersive, shrinking the bezel and making for the most edge-to-edge big iPhone experience around.

Of course, the new iPhone also gets Apple's latest power and will receive a year of extra software support over the iPhone 15 Pro Max, and there are some other less noticeable bumps like a boosted ultra-wide camera resolution.

Despite the phone's highlights, it's clear that any iPhone 15 Pro Max owners probably shouldn't feel compelled to upgrade to the 16 Pro Max just yet, but what about iPhone 13 and 14 series users – is the 16 Pro Max still a compelling option in spite of its incremental and unrealized upgrades?

iPhone 16 Pro Max Design

The iPhone 16 Pro Max is a big phone. Its huge 6.9-inch screen is the biggest around, yet, Apple still manages to keep its footprint down thanks to the super-thin bezel framing the display. That means the Pro Max's size is actually comparable to many Android 6.7-6.8-inch screened phones, adding a futuristic, all-screen vibe from the front.

Since moving to a titanium frame, the Pro iPhones have shaved off a few pounds, and at 227g, while the 16 Pro Max isn't a featherweight, it's still lighter than the iPhone 14 Pro Max and other chunky Android alternatives like the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra.

One point to note: the iPhone 16 Pro Max's size makes chunky, protective cases extra cumbersome. Mous has a couple of slimline options, but these aren't as protective, so bear that in mind when deciding between the smaller iPhone 16 Pro and the supersized Max.

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The back of the iPhone 16 Pro Max combines a flat piece of glass with a chunky camera bump. The phone's metal frame softly curves at the edges into the front and back, softening the feel in the hand, while the flat sides add a good amount of grip.

There's a USB-C port at the base for data and charging, volume buttons and a shortcut button are on the left side, and on the right side is the power button and Action Button.

We'll cover the Action Button functionality in the camera section, but it's worth touching on its positioning, and the consensus isn't great. The button is too far up the phone's right side, so when you use it like a camera button while holding the phone sideways, you have to bring your index finger in front of the display to press it. This is slightly better on the 16 Pro than on the 16 Pro Max, but neither phone's Action Button is small-finger-friendly when holding the phone like a traditional camera. The fact the button is also flush with the right side of the phone makes it even harder to locate with a feel.

With IP68 water and dust resistance, tested to 6m for 30 minutes, and with Corning tempered glass on the front, the iPhone 16 Pro is as durable as a flagship needs to be. We did get a couple of mystery micro scratches in our month with the phone despite taking good care of it, so we opted for a screen protector to prevent further scratches.

While initially, we chose a third-party screen protector that we fit ourselves, this didn't play nicely with the cases we opted for, so we bit the bullet and got a Belkin UltraGlass 2 screen protector which was fitted at our local Apple Store.

You can also pick up the 16 Pro in four colors: Black Titanium, White Titanium, Natural Titanium, and Desert Titanium, with the device pictured in this review being Black Titanium.

iPhone 16 Pro Max Screen

With its huge 6.9-inch screen, the iPhone 16 Pro Max has the biggest smartphone display Apple's made, and as we mentioned, the slimline bezels make it exceptionally immersive without adding too much extra bulk compared to the 15 Pro Max. Don't get us wrong, this phone is a stretch, but any gamers or smartphone streamers will really appreciate both the size and quality on offer here.

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Spec-wise, the LTPO Super Retina display delivers, with HDR 10 and Dolby Vision support, a smooth 120Hz refresh rate and a peak brightness of 2000 nits when auto brightness is fired up and 1000 nits when manually ramping it up.

With a 1320 x 2868 resolution and a 460PPI pixel density, it's also sharp, and thanks to the AMOLED tech, visuals look deep, punchy, and inky, with excellent viewing angles. In our experience, we didn't have any responsiveness issues either.

While the Dynamic Island was a bit of an eye-sore on the smaller iPhone 16 Pro, the pill-shaped cutout around the selfie camera and Face ID sensors is less of an imposition on the Pro Max's much larger display. When watching 16:9 content, the Dynamic Island is invisible, but when gaming or watching widescreen video, it does eat into your view.

iPhone 16 Pro Max camera specs

The 16 Pro Max has the same primary and telephoto camera spec as the 15 Pro Max, though this year, it upgrades the ultra-wide resolution to 48MP.

The main camera also has a 48MP resolution, a 1/1.29-inch sensor, and a 24mm f/1.78 aperture lens. It also uses Apple's sensor-shift OIS and can capture 48MP, 24MP, and 12MP photos.

The ultra-wide has been bumped up for 2024, from 12MP to 48MP, retaining the same 13mm focal length and an f/2.2 aperture lens. The sensor size is similar, so beyond pixel-binning gains, photo improvements will likely be modest.

Apple has come under fire in recent years for unflattering photos in certain scenes, so goes some way to fix this for its 2024 flagships by giving users more control over how their photos look. When you set up the phone, you not only get the chance to choose a camera look but also set the tone and color, choosing from a standard or numerous preset color profiles.

You can retrospectively customize the look of your photo with an intuitive matrix editor, though to take advantage of this feature, you need to shoot in HEIF or HEIF Max. Video editing has also been leveled up with post-capture audio effects. Choose between Standard, In-frame, Studio, and Cinematic for different blends of ambient sound, with Standard being the default – all audio is prioritized – In-Frame focusing on what the iPhone thinks is in-frame, Studio boosting voices and removing background sound, and Cinematic blending the spoken and ambient sounds.

iPhone 16 Pro Max camera review

The iPhone 16 Pro Max's camera may have virtually identical hardware to its predecessor, but its pictures do look better thanks to updated processing. Apple leans into computational photography to clean up shots between 1x and 5x – a serious weak point for the iPhone 15 Pro Max – and this does make a big difference, though we would have appreciated more computational cleaning up at 5x and beyond as zoom shots look a bit grainy when the light isn't right and a subject is moving. A steady hand plus Apple's auto night mode, however, pulls up decent-looking photos, as you can see below:

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Generally, photos taken on the 16 Pro Max are consistent across cameras. In bright environments, all three capture Instagram-ready pictures with a fair bit of sharpening and contrast applied. Colors look lively while still being relatively natural, and shots from the primary and telephoto cameras can pull out a pleasing amount of depth separation.

The primary camera will always be your go-to option. Its bigger sensor means it can capture lowlight shots without having to rely on super-extended night mode shutter speeds, and because of the telephoto camera's weak minimum focus distance of 1m or more, the primary camera ended up being our default for product shots, food photos, and portraits.

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Dynamic range from the primary camera was also strong, and even when shooting in RAW/RAW Max, we could pull back plenty of salvageable shadow detail from the 1/1.29-inch sensor. It does have a tendency to prioritise shadows over highlights, though, which can result in blown out areas, even when night mode fires up.

As for the telephoto camera, on a practical level, we prefer 70-85mm periscope cameras, as found in the OnePlus Open or Vivo X200 Pro, over the 120mm setup Apple adopts. The iPhone's optical zoom does reach further, which is handy, but owing to the smaller sensor, it struggles in dark or high-contrast scenes or environments with moving subjects, as pictured below.

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Apple's ultra-wide camera is competent while being unremarkable. Its photos look slightly cleaner than those of the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, once again illustrating improvements in computational photography for the 16 Pro series. The dynamic range is once again respectable for static subjects or bright environments, and Apple does a great job of creating color consistency across all three rear cameras.

Owing to the small sensor, though, even with the bump in resolution, lowlight photos captured on the ultra-wide can look muddy. It's fair to say that Apple's trepidation to commit to more aggressive computational photography across all its cameras could hurt it if Google and Samsung go the route of Chinese brands like Oppo, Xiaomi, and Vivo and level up their AI-style image processing.

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Video shot with the iPhone 16 Pro Max's primary camera is class-leading. Apple's frame rates across lighting conditions are the most consistent of all the phones we've tested, and the large primary sensor means you can get meaningfully detailed ProRes footage for edits after the shoot and some subtle depth separation too. The slow motion 4K 120fps footage also looks excellent this year, making the primary camera a clear video champ.

We wish Apple had invested a bit more in its secondary cameras. With their small sensors, they fall behind competition like the Honor Magic 6 Pro and Xiaomi 14 Ultra for image quality in almost every environment, so even steady frame rates can't save ultra-wide or telephoto clips in challenging scenes. On a sunny day or in a brightly lit space, though, footage looks predictably good.

On the subject of underwhelming secondary cameras, Apple's modest 12MP resolution front camera has a small 1/3.6" sensor. Its photos are only ever fine in challenging scenes, though you can eke out a usable selfie with the help of Apple's Portrait Mode, which is respectable across both the front and rear camera mix.

iPhone 16 Pro Action Button

The Action Button is a handy way to fire up your camera. You can set it to launch with a single or double tap, and when you're in the camera app, half-press and slide your finger across the button to zoom in or out, or full-press it to take your shot.

If you double half-press the Action Button while in the camera app, you can cycle through slider functions, with exposure, depth (for Portrait Mode), cameras, styles, and tone, in addition to zoom.

We mentioned the awkward positioning of the button – too high for comfortable landscape pressing – but it's also too low for comfortable portrait orientation swiping. While it's super-responsive and does what it needs to, therefore, we only ever found ourselves launching the camera with it, deferring to on-screen controls for everything else.

iPhone 16 Pro additional features

Running with an Apple A18 Pro 3nm chipset, the iPhone 16 Pro Max is a powerhouse when it comes to performance and arguably the best gaming phone around, given iOS's extensive game library, the caliber of the titles on offer, and third-party peripheral support, matched with the giant, flat display.

We played back Genshin Impact and Wuthering Waves at max settings for long bouts with no overheating and respectable battery drain. We did, however, experience a couple of instances of the latter force closing, and experienced the same issue in WhatsApp. Historically, Android phones were regarded as less stable than iPhones, but the 16 series looks set to challenge that notion.

iOS 18, Apple's latest interface, does more to overhaul the visual experience than any version before it. You can recolor your icons, organize them how you see fit, and do a lot of other stuff Android has been slowly baking into its experience for years.

This overhaul to iOS, however, seems to have added a few more gremlins than we've seen before from the operating system. Occasionally, after taking a photo, when we tapped the photo thumbnail to open the gallery, half our screen would flicker before we viewed it. When using universal search by swiping down on our home screen, our colorized icons would display in their default colors for a split second before being redrawn in our chosen style.

To clarify, we aren't running a Beta on our iPhone 16 Pro. This is final retail software, and when you consider the high price of these phones, especially in the UK where a higher Apple tax is levied compared to most other regions, it's pretty difficult to stomach.

We're also at the point where split-screen multi-tasking or floating windows on smartphones are features we'd really like to see in iOS on big-screened phones like this. Whether we need to pull a code sent to an email account or quickly need to reference a web page while editing a document, iOS's lack of multi-tasking is felt on a phone like the 16 Pro Max.

Then there's the lack of AI features. While Samsung launched its AI tools with the Galaxy S24 series at the beginning of the year, and Google's Pixel 9 family dropped with a full suite of AI tools in tow a few months ago, we've been using our 16 Pro Max for a full month and have had no Apple Intelligence feature drops. Yes, we could update to iOS 18 Beta, but we shouldn't need to use Beta software to access features Apple advertised as part of the OS of the 16 series.

All this takes the shine off Apple's latest launches, and makes the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max seem like equally compelling choices if you don't need the latest power or that Action Button.

There is one critical area the iPhone 16 Pro Max beats out the 15 Pro Max, though, and that's battery life. The 16 Pro Max has amongst the best battery life of any smartphone we've used, which is immensely impressive considering its screen size and quality. We got through a full day with 20-35 percent battery remaining, while our iPhone 15 Pro Max often struggled to make it through an intensive day.

Background tasks like Wi-Fi hotspotting and music playback tended to drain and heat the phone less, and even screen-on time gave us long-lasting battery life for a phone with this much power and this much size. Considering the 16 Pro Max has a modest 3580mAh cell, we have to commend Apple on the efficiency of iOS 18 and the A18 Pro chip powering the experience.

As for charging speed, the 16 Pro Max is a slow charger with PD 2.0 support, charging the phone fully in around two hours, and wireless charging caps out at 15W, so it will take significantly longer.

iPhone 16 Pro Max verdict

While the iPhone 16 Pro is a very good small phone – powerful, pocketable, and it has a capable camera – the 16 Pro Max is an excellent multimedia powerhouse. Its huge screen looks great and, whether gaming or watching, pulls the phone into its element. The long-lasting battery life outperforms past iPhones and zaps battery anxiety, which is priceless. The video camera is also still the best of any smartphone for pros, thanks to its stable frame rates and ProRes capture to external media.

There are some big buts holding back the 16 Pro Max from excellence. First, iOS 18 feels half-baked. We experienced both visual glitches and occasional app force-closes in our time with it. We also experienced the same issues on our iPad running the new OS with the latest M4 chip, tarnishing Apple's reputation over Android when it comes to software stability, and making the premium prices of its Pro gadgets sting that bit more.

The iPhone 16 and 16 Pro Max also missed out on Apple Intelligence at launch, which was a big sell at WWDC 2024 and is even front and center of Apple's advertising around the phone. Different regions will be updated at different times with different features.

A final mark against the 16 Pro Max is its secondary cameras. We like the primary camera, its sensor is large, and Apple has meaningfully updated the experience around making photos look how we want them to. The telephoto camera's small sensor and minimum focus distance of around 1m hold it back, though, and the ultra-wide and front cameras don't fare much better.

The final nail in the iPhone 16 Pro Max's good-not-great verdict is the phone's price. iPhones have never been more expensive, specifically for UK customers, and the Pro Max is the priciest of all, starting at £1,199 / $1,199 / AU $2,149. So while there's no denying this phone is the biggest, best iPhone Apple's ever made, all things considered, it doesn't leap to the top of our best camera phone chart like past iPhones have, and might be a smarter buy after its software experience is fully realized, which looks set to be around Q1 2025.