uh what’s up mkbhd here all right iphone 12 pro max the big boy so if you’ve seen the reviews of iphone 12 and iphone 12 pro you probably you basically already know everything you need to know about the new generation of iphones so now we have iphone 12 mini and iphone 12 pro max dropping at the same time opposite ends of the spectrum so yes i am dropping two videos at the same time this one is all about the pro max and i’ll link below the video about the mini if you want to check that out too so the pro max is the everything phone it’s the biggest it’s the most apple has to offer fun fact even the sticker in the pro max box is the biggest of any iphone box but also now interestingly in the past iphones have all just typically been the same thing across the board but different sizes maybe an extra camera in the pro this year there’s an entirely new different special camera system in just the pro max that’s not in any of the other new iphones so naturally this was the focus of my testing that’s a pun so i think all the other benefits of a bigger iphone sort of speak for themselves right the
display is a slightly higher resolution and it’s of course now a 6.7 inch screen instead of the 6.5 inch from last year’s max so this is the biggest canvas of a screen apple’s ever put in a phone i would have really really liked for them to make it high refresh rate but again in the reviews i talked about why it’s not there most likely battery but in every other metric this is a top of the line excellent smartphone display but also speaking of battery the iphone 12 pro max does have the biggest battery in any of the new iphones and yes it does last noticeably longer first of all it has an incredible standby time and i’ve typically ended days with it around 25 with six maybe seven hours of screen on time sometimes so if you’re looking for the iphone with the best battery this is definitely it it’s comparable to the 11 pro max i would say maybe just a tiny bit less then also the biggest iphone does technically also get the biggest speaker if you look at the bottom of all these phones the 12 pro max has a bigger grille than the others but
honestly it’s not a noticeably louder speaker at all really i just found it has slightly bassier sound at the highest volumes that’s about it and the biggest iphone also will of course have the biggest viewing area and also because it’s the same size notch on a bigger screen the notch kind of feels maybe a tiny bit smaller even though it is still comically big compared to other phones but this is at least a no-brainer of a choice of an iphone if people want to watch videos do a lot of typing a lot of texting a lot of photo editing big screen stuff like that if you’re not used to the size of this bigger iphone it’s gonna feel huge like the toughest thing is you’ll notice right from the start reachability is kind of tough you can’t reach all four corners of this phone with one hand like you can with the mini for example but other than that i have no problems with it also side note this is my first time using the gold iphone and sheesh this is a shiny gold outside rail the back of the phone actually isn’t that gold it’s more kind of like an off-white sand color with the matte finish and then the rings around the camera and the stainless steel sides are the really gold part but they’re still going to collect fingerprints like crazy honestly it’s not the color i would pick but they don’t have like a matte black pro iphone this year so i guess i could just pick any color and then grab a dbrand skin literally just for the side rails did you know you could do that yeah just matte black for the shiny sides and all my complaints are solved so i’ll drop a link below if you want to do the same
thing shout out to dbrand for being a channel sponsor but enough of that what you’re probably here for is this camera right the question is is this new camera system on the 12 pro max worth like spending the extra money and getting it over the 12 or the 12 pro if you’re a creator if you’re a pro no so first of all okay i just want to point out it really is a physically larger camera module like the rounded circle that the cameras live on is bigger and the camera rings and lenses themselves are all also bigger and that’s to house the new hardware inside namely the 47 larger main camera sensor that now has sensor shift stabilization instead of lens based stabilization and there’s also a new 2.5 x telephoto lens so that’s huge literally like a physically larger sensor plus better stabilization just screams like way better light gathering abilities so i’d be looking for improvements not just in regular everyday photos in normal situations but especially in lower light when you need to maximize light gathering so ideally you see better night mode performance you see maybe even not having to kick into night mode as often because it’s gathering so much light and maybe even not having to hold the phone still for as long when you do have to kick into night mode but i found none of these things to actually be true now trust me i really wanted to see a difference like this is the one with the actually new camera hardware this is the first big jump for the iphone in a little while with the cameras with the bigger sensor i was hoping maybe to see some more
natural depth or some more of that bigger sensor look that photographers know to look for and i didn’t see much of that to be honest you could already get a solid amount of natural bokeh without portrait mode on plenty of smartphone cameras including other iphones this one’s no different still takes great photos and videos with smart hdr still does all the typical iphone computational photography all that’s great i’m just not seeing much of a difference versus the other new iphone 12s so at this point i’m like all right maybe to see the difference i i just got to put it side by side like most people won’t do that and that’s actually a telltale sign of a feature that probably regular people won’t notice is if you have to put it side by side with something else to even see it in the first place but i want to see the difference i’m testing them i’m testing the mini at the same time so i’m going around with both the 12 pro max and the 12 mini taking photos side by side and when i tell you i couldn’t see much of a difference i mean seriously you’re seeing the results here for yourself i did a back to back photo testing in regular light and even much more here in lower light where i was expecting to see the bigger sensor and better stabilization shine and show me a difference and believe it or not i just didn’t so the only really noticeable stuff i can point to between the mini and the pro max seems to be slightly better edge sharpness and some of those wider landscape type shots but in the dark i didn’t see any noticeably lower noise levels i didn’t
see any shorter night mode stabilization times i didn’t see a much of the better quality in low light shots i was hoping to now again let’s not forget it is still really impressive photography in this low light and in regular light it really speaks to i guess how good the computational photography and iphones has gotten over the years more than anything bad about the pro max phone by the way it also doesn’t fix any of the haloing sort of glowing orbs you see in nighttime videography they still show up pretty much anytime there’s a point light in the scene in low light video something i noticed when i first started testing the 12s so all right the main camera i’ve tested it it’s physically different yes but the results are very difficult to see any differences with i’m glad i tested it but we can’t forget there’s also a second uh telephoto lens there’s the 2.5 x instead of 2x so my photographer friends out there that’s about a 65 millimeter equivalent instead of 52 millimeters it’s not a dramatic difference as you may have guessed but yeah it’s right there now now there’s a 2.5 x button in the
camera now and the final maximum allowed zoom in camera is 12x instead of the usual 5 or 10x yeah it didn’t make a massive difference for me really what i actually noticed more is getting locked into 2.5x or 1x for portrait mode shots because regular iphone 12 pro does portrait mode at 1x and 2x so this one punching in a little bit further starting to get a little bit further away but i still stick with 1x for portrait mode when i can so yeah i guess the story is apple finally made a jump in hardware and nothing really happened not much happened i mean i was kind of hoping for a bigger jump in hardware to be honest like if you just pay attention to iphones you might think oh they finally made a 50 bigger sensor that’s a big deal but if you look at the rest of the world around the iphone there’s a lot of crazy hardware stuff going on there’s 50 60 100 megapixel sensors there’s 8k video happening there’s 3x 5x 10x telephotos with periscope lenses inside there’s incredible computational photography and gimbal mode
stabilization like there is a lot going on with hardware advances available for cameras but that’s not the apple way of course the apple way is more sit back take a take the landscape in see what sticks around for a while and starts to become an obvious benefit then grab that make it a little better make it the apple thing fit into the ecosystem puzzle unless it’s usbc so yeah the camera in the 12 pro max i’m just going to go ahead and say is not the biggest reason for you to upgrade to it but this is definitely the phone you should get if you want the biggest iphone i mean it’s clearly the biggest and best battery it’s the biggest and best screen it’s your biggest and best viewfinder biggest and best keyboard biggest and best iphone for sure that’s what i’d recommend for this so i don’t know maybe uh maybe the 12 pro isn’t such a bad move after all or just stick with the 12. i don’t know all the reviews are out now you can check it out let me know what you think would you spend the 1100 bucks on the 12 pro max or would you settle for a different iphone let me know in the comments let’s hang out there either way that’s been it thanks catch you guys soon peace.
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