iPHONE 13 PRO MAX REVIEW

 iPHONE 13 PRO MAX 

so this is the iphone 13 pro max at first glance you might get a sense of deja vu as it looks just like the iphone 12 pro max but under the glass and steel exterio hide a number of upgrades so is this the iphone that you should get i'm andrew for gsm arena and this is our review of the iphone 13 pro max like i said the outward design hasn't changed very much the phone has a glass on the front and back along with a shiny stainless steel frame that adores collecting fingerprints the layout is otherwise unchanged too the notch is a smidge smaller and the camera bump is just a little larger but that's the biggest change that you'll see here pick the max up though and you will notice something new it's heavier than before and at 240 grams it's heavy for your smartphone in general it's also massive especially with a case on it so before buying it you should really pick one up literally because the max's size might not be your cup of tea the 13 pro max is as rugged as last year's model it should survive up to 6 meters underwater for 30 minutes the display's cover glass the ceramic shield by corning once again offers some of the best protection in the industry though it will shatter and scratch if you abuse it as for the screen itself it's a 6.7 inch super retina oled with a pixel density of 458 ppi it's hdr 10 and dolby vision compliant too for the first time apple is introducing a high 120 hertz refresh rate on its phones they call it promotion and it's adaptive games can't fully utilize it just yet but aside from that the feature is executed very well the display can drop down to as little as 10 hertz and then jump up to 120hz on the fly depending on whether you're touching the screen and the current content this both saves on battery life and offers a smoother experience when you need it other than that this is a wonderful display it has a wide color gamut and pretty much flawless color accuracy we also got an excellent 1050 nits in auto brightness which means this is one of the brightest panels on the market the audio quality from its speakers was similarly impressive the iphone 13 pro max has a bottom firing speaker and it uses its earpiece as a second channel the speakers earned a very good loudness rating on our tests and these are among the best sounding speakers that you can get on a phone the max is a hefty phone and part of that comes from its 4 352 milliamp hour battery which is the biggest one that apple has ever put in an iphone and surprisingly one of the best parts of the 13 pro has to be the battery life it got a 121 hour endurance rating on our tests not only is this the longest endurance ever for an iphone  it's up there in terms of 2021 flagships in general and it's not just good standby times that give it this result screen on time is great and this phone will likely survive a full day or two of heavy usage irritatingly the iphone ships without a charger using apple's 20 watt charger the 13 pro max got from zero to 42 in half an hour since the phone supports charging up to 27 watts if you get a more powerful adapter you can get up to 55 in half an hour however it doesn't improve the full charge times the iphone 13 pro arrives with apple's latest a15 bionic chipset the phone is equipped with six gigs of ram versus four gigabytes on the non-pro models performance wise the pro max is way ahead of its android competition and its closest rivals are last year's iphones the new chipset improves last year's performance by 10 and it is the fastest chipset in a phone to date the one concern we do have is that the gpu was quick to throttle and we would have liked to see better sustained performance the 13 pro max comes with ios 15 out of the box and while visually it's not a huge update over ios 14 you'll notice that ui elements are slightly rounder more notably facetime messages notification management the safari browser wallet and maps have all been improved for example notifications got a complete overhaul and they now have better visibility and you can set focus profiles that filter notifications depending on what you're doing we have more details about ios 15 and our iphone 13 review and we've left a link to it down below but the biggest update with the pro max model this year must be the cameras all three rear cameras have been improved so what are you getting here the 12 megapixel main sensor has larger pixels than before the largest single pixels in a smartphone in fact the 12 megapixel telephoto now has optical three times zoom instead of 2.5 times and the 12 megapixel ultroid sensor lets in more light and now has auto focus so it can double as a macro cam there is a lighter scanner too and it helps the three cameras with depth maps for better portraits and faster auto focus in low light only the selfie camera is the same 12 megapixel unit as before during the day the 13 pro max takes very good photos with the main camera and of course they have a very iphone like flavor colors are accurate but unexciting dynamic range is wide and hdr is balanced detail is good and noise is non-existent if you want more dramatic images you can use the photographic styles to achieve a more expressive look the telephoto maintains the same vibe as the main camera and you get sharp and detailed images noise is minimal and the dynamic range is good the ultrawide is also quietly competent colors and dynamic range are a good match for the other cameras there's some extra softness here and there though and a bit of noise thanks to the autofocus you can get some extreme close-ups with the ultra red camera they're not quite macro and the focus is quite shallow but still with good light patience and a steady hand you can get some pretty impressive shots you can take portraits with both the main camera and the telephoto the main camera will get you higher quality images while the telephoto allows for a nicer perspective with the main camera subject separation is good but the phone sometimes blurs the shoulders of your subject when it shouldn't skin tones are warm detail is great and the dynamic range is great too with a telephoto portraits are a little softer and there were more mishaps in subject detection once again dynamic range and colors are excellent shots with the front camera had very likable skin tones exposure and dynamic range were great detail was superb and we didn't notice much noise the 13 pro max has an excellent default auto night mode it's less aggressive than android phones when it comes to restoring highlights and boosting shadows so you get a more true to life look detail is good outside of tonal extremes and you'll find white balance and color saturation to be on point while you can disable it there isn't really a good reason to do so if you want to zoom in at night the max will revert to its primary camera if the scene is too dark overall images are okay but they're nothing amazing detail and sharpness are good in reasonably lit scenes when they're captured by the actual telephoto they are a little too dark for our taste though at night the ultrawide snapper is a step up from what you get on the iphone 12 pro and what you get with the vanilla iphone 13. shots have good sharpness and detail and colors are accurate once again we would have preferred slightly brighter shadows the iphone can record video up to 4k at 60fps with all of its cameras iphones usually have excellent video quality and the situation is no different here during the day footage is great dynamic range is good colors are lively there's no noise and detail is plenty videos with a telephoto are the same as with the main camera just zoomed in three times the ultrawide is as good as the other two cameras there's great parody as far as color exposure and dynamic range are concerned detail is great too and we found it to be crisper than the galaxy s21 ultra though not quite at the level of the mi 11 ultra in low light the main camera captured footage that had good exposure and dynamic range and accurate colors detail is good but not great too if you zoom in three times low light footage is sourced from the main camera so it's mushy if you really want to zoom in you should find brighter areas the ultrawide does decently in low light when it comes to exposure and dynamic range there's a new cinematic mode on the 13 pro 2. basically it's like portrait mode for videos and it simulates blur for things that should be out of focus you can change the simulated aperture and if the auto mode makes a mistake you can fix everything later since it's all done by the software it's not perfect but the video quality is quite good and if you don't mind tweaking it a bit in post you can make some pretty nice the iphone 13 pro max doesn't look very different from its predecessor the notch should have been long gone by now and it's actually not significantly faster however the screen is fantastic the stereo speakers are great performance is still unmatched and the battery life is simply class leading photo and video quality is great across the board too is this the most innovative phone ever hardly but it offers a very solid experience in pretty much every department and of course it's the best iphone ever so if you're upgrading from an iphone that is older than the iphone 12 pro we definitely recommend it.