Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max review: totally maxed out | Apple

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Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max review: totally maxed out | Apple

The iPhone 16 Pro Max is Apple’s latest superphone, with a massive screen, the fastest chip and the most advanced cameras on an iPhone, ready to be your entertainment powerhouse, if you can squeeze it into a pocket or bag.

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This enormous iPhone comes at an equally huge price. Starting at £1,199 (€1,449/$1,199/A$2,149) the 16 Pro Max tops the iPhone 16 series, towering above the £999 16 Pro and £899 16 Plus, though, at least it comes with double the starting storage of the rest.

Unlike their predecessors, the 16 Pro and Pro Max have matching cameras, chips and capabilities, providing a choice of size between a relatively compact 6.3in screen and the biggest ever fitted to an Apple phone.

The 16 Pro Max (left) dwarfs the 16 Pro (right) but both phones have the same quality screen. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

The 16 Pro Max’s 6.9in screen is 0.2in ******* on the diagonal than the outgoing 15 Pro Max, which makes it one of the largest on the market, outstretching Samsung and

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’s superphones. The display looks fantastic: bright, crisp and slick, with its 120Hz refresh rate to keep scrolling and animations smooth. For widescreen video the visible display is only 10% (18mm) shorter than the iPad mini, so it feels more like watching films on a small tablet than a phone.

Thinner bezels around the screen have soaked up some of the display’s increase in size but the 16 Pro Max is 6g heavier, 3.1mm longer and 1mm wider than its predecessor. That makes it a full 13.4mm taller, 6.1mm wider and 28g heavier than the regular 16 Pro.

You will need two hands to use it most of the time and likely a phone grip to avoid hand strain.

Specifications

• Screen: 6.9in Super Retina XDR (120Hz OLED) (460ppi)

• Processor: Apple A18 Pro

• RAM: 8GB

• Storage: 256, 512GB or 1TB

• Operating system: iOS 18

• Camera: 48MP main, 48MP UW and 12MP 5x zoom, 12MP front-facing

• Connectivity: 5G, wifi 7, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3, Thread, USB-C, Satellite, UWB and GNSS

• Water resistance: IP68 (6 metres for 30 mins)

• Dimensions: 163 x 77.6 x 8.25mm

• Weight: 227g

A18 Pro chip and a big battery

A full charge takes just under 110 minutes using a 30W USB-C charger (not included), hitting 52% in 30 minutes. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

The 16 Pro Max has the same rapid new A18 Pro chip as its smaller sibling and comes with a minimum of 256GB of storage, which should be plenty for most that aren’t attempting to ****** the next blockbuster film.

The battery lasts for about 55 hours of general use between charges while actively using the screen for almost eight hours on a mixture of 5G and wifi. That is 10 to 15 hours longer than its predecessor and the 16 Pro, and means charging it every third day or less with lighter usage. Playing games and other intensive tasks did dent the battery, but even so the 16 Pro Max will outlast even the heaviest of days usage.

iOS 18.1 and the start of Apple Intelligence

The first features of Apple Intelligence have been added in US English with the recent iOS 18.1 update. Left to right: Settings, Siri, Writing Tools, Clean Up and notification summaries. Composite: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

It runs iOS 18.1, which has various new customisation options, RCS support for messaging Android users and the excellent maths notes feature from the iPad. The recent update has also enabled the first of Apple’s new AI features that are available in beta, but only in US English, with ***, Australia and other non-US English due to be enabled in December.

These include a change to the way Siri appears, now presented as glowing edging around the screen. You can also type queries by double-tapping the gesture bar at the bottom of the screen, which is quite neat. Siri is still far behind rival

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and others in usefulness, but it can better understand natural language, particularly when changing your mind mid-query.

New writing tools are capable of proofreading, summarising and rewriting your text in different styles such as friendly, professional or concise. The tools are available everywhere the keyboard is, so pretty much in any app. But they are clearly designed for writing messages and emails, and struggled with longer documents, sometimes appearing blank for a few seconds before the text appeared. They weren’t that useful in my day-to-day life beyond a more advanced spellcheck.

The Mail app now puts urgent emails at the top and offers summaries of emails instead of the first line when viewing your inbox. A smart reply system suggests answers to questions in emails and messages as you type, which is a bit hit and miss.

The Photos app has natural language searches, such as “Sam drinking a *****”, which work pretty well. It also has a new AI Clean Up tool, similar to

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’s Magic Eraser, that deletes objects from photos just by tapping or circling them with your finger. For simple removals of background or foreground objects it can work well, but struggles with anything complex, leaving odd-looking artefacts.

The new voice transcription in the Notes app is fast, but with variable accuracy, tripping up on common words, phrases and names; good enough to get the gist, but not to be relied on for accuracy for now. You can also now record calls straight from the phone app, which alerts the caller that they are being recorded.

None of these tools are novel, with arguably better versions already available from

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, including in the Gmail and

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Photos apps on an iPhone. But the new notification summaries are novel and useful.

They condense and summarise groups of notifications, such as multiple WhatsApps, security camera events or even news app alerts. You can choose which apps it summarises, but set to do them all I found it worked better than expected. You can tap on the stack to see each individual notification, but often I could just swipe it away without needing further interrogation or see there was something meaningful in the deluge of pings.

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Sustainability

The glass back and titanium sides of the 16 Pro Max (left) and 16 Pro (right) feel nice but the size and fragility of the phone warrants using a case. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

Apple says the battery

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with at least 80% of its original capacity and can be

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. Out-of-warranty

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. The 16 Pro Max has repair guides available and was awarded

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by the specialists iFixit.

It contains more than 25% recycled material including aluminium, cobalt, copper, gold, lithium, plastic, rare earth elements, steel, tin and tungsten. The company breaks down the phone’s environmental impact in its report. Apple offers trade-in and free recycling schemes, including for non-Apple products.

Camera

The camera control button zooms, changes cameras, adjusts settings and shoots photos, but its position is only good for the right-handed. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

The triple cameras on the back is similar to last year’s iPhone 15 Pro Max and matches the system on the smaller 16 Pro performing the same. They include a great 48-megapixel main camera, a 5x optical zoom camera and upgraded 48MP ultrawide camera.

The 16 Pro Max can also ****** spatial photos and video for viewing on headsets such as the Vision Pro, and has Apple’s excellent new audio mix feature that can cut out background noise and make it sound like those in the shot each have lapel mics.

But it is Apple’s upgraded photographic styles feature that makes the biggest difference, allowing you to adjust the tones and colours produced by the camera, either when ********* or after the fact.

The camera control button works great for quickly opening the camera and ********* photos but is fiddly to use to adjust the camera settings with any precision.

Price

The iPhone 16 Pro Max costs from £1,199 (€1,449/$1,199/A$2,149) with 256GB of storage.

For comparison, the iPhone 16 costs £799, the iPhone 16 Plus costs £899, the iPhone 16 Pro costs £999, the

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Pixel 9 Pro XL costs

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, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra costs £1,249 and the Fairphone 5 costs

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.

Verdict

Apple’s biggest iPhone has grown even larger for 2024, which is its key selling point and a bit of a hinderance.

It has all the things you should expect from a superphone: an enormous and excellent screen, multiday battery life, a blazingly fast chip and excellent cameras capable of outshooting and out-zooming most regular phones.

But its enormous size makes it hard to handle, giving me hand pain with prolonged use, and makes it more difficult to fit comfortably into pockets and bags.

The first Apple Intelligence features enabled by the recent iOS18.1 update are slightly disappointing, mostly playing catchup to competitors. Siri in particular needs an intelligence upgrade to compete. The AI notification summaries are novel and useful, however, and Apple is promising more advanced features to come in later updates. But I don’t think Apple Intelligence has any ******* features to make people upgrade yet.

Unlike previous years, the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max have the same features and specs, apart from size and battery life. So if you can handle the size and stomach the eye-watering price, the iPhone 16 Pro Max is a very good phone. It’s just not the model I would choose.

*****: huge and glorious screen, multiday battery life, great cameras including 5x optical zoom, USB-C, action and camera control buttons, top performance, long software support, Face ID.

*****: very expensive, heavy, really big frame is ******* to hold and carry, camera control a bit tricky, first Apple Intelligence features a bit disappointing.

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