should you get an iPhone 15 Pro Max or save
$300 and get a 15 plus well I'm going to tell you guys every single difference
skipping the specs but focusing on real world differences and this year the
results are a lot different than last year and I think you guys are going to
be surprised now I mentioned that price difference there and you have a
difference of ram 256 versus 128 now most people don't need 256 so
that's a 300 difference and I was surprised that the memory speed is not
much slower even though it is half the capacity now as far as the comfort in
hand last year I loved the 14 plus because it was so much lighter but this
year the difference is very minimal and with that the 15 Pro Max is actually
slightly narrower and slightly shorter than the 15 plus and because of the new
curved edges on the front and the back both phones feel very comfortable and
it's hard to tell that the 15 Pro Max is slightly thicker now we definitely have
a difference in camera bums the 15 Pro Maxes sticks out quite a bit more so if
you don't like Wobble the 15 plus is a little bit better in that way and one
difference this year is that the new titanium no longer feels a lot more
premium in the hand compared to the aluminum they actually feel almost
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now the next Real World difference is the action button on the 15 plus you
have that classic silent switch which is really nice but having this action
button you can do a ton of things I have mine set to open up the camera app and
that is very convenient but you can also use it for silent mode focus camera
flashlight voice memos and of course shortcuts so you can customize this to
whatever you want and how much does that matter in the real world well I think it
is nice compared to just that silent rocker but I don't think it's something
that will make you get the pro Max instead of the plus now as far as
speakers the 15 Pro Max is so impressive it got louder this year the sound
quality is better and typically the regular iPhone including the 14 plus
sounded worse than the pro variant but this year I was shocked go ahead and
take a listen for [Music]
[Music] yourself the 15 plus either sounds
identical or very close to the pro MX Max and that is awesome the apple is
using really great speakers on both so you don't really get a downside now the
next thing I want to talk about is battery life I was also impressed with
the battery life of the 15 Pro Max it actually got better even though they
didn't quote it getting better but even though the 15 Pro Max has a larger
battery the battery life seems to be better on the 15 plus now I didn't do a
crazy in-depth test like Mister who's the boss did but in his comparison the
15 plus is the best phone he has ever tested and in the real world you can
tell now I was not expecting this because the a17 pro is a 3 nanm compared
to the a16 which is a mix of 4 nanm and 5 nanom so should be less efficient
right well the A7 Pro actually uses up to 14 watts of power whereas the a16
runs at roughly 10 to 11 so that's up to 40% more power when the phones needs to
use high performance that is crazy and that results in some great battery life
now thankfully as far as 5G speeds the 15 plus this year has the same x70 as
the pro Max which is awesome and that actually saves battery life which is
helping it out as well and the speeds compared to the 14 lineup are quite a
bit faster both outdoors and indoors and that is really nice to know that this
year you're not going to be sacrificing speed and reception now as far as
charging speed the 15 Pro Max actually goes up to 27 watts compared to 25 and
it takes an hour and 25 minutes for a full charge compared to an hour and 45
minutes and that's just a difference of how much power it accepts throughout the
whole charging cycle so it's a little bit quicker now another crazy thing this
year is that Apple brought the dynamic Island to the 15 plus where last year it
still had add that old Notch and with that we did not expect it to get the
super bright xdr display that can hit up to 2,000 nits so outdoor brightness is
now the same you get PR level brightness same thing for watching HDR video uh the
brightness and quality is identical which is so nice so as far as the
screens you're not missing out for the most part but there are a couple
stipulations first off you do not get the always on display like get on the 15
Pro Max that is Apple just limiting it and this is nice because you can have
widgets you can see your data it is something that I really enjoy and with
that you do not get promotion so you get 60 HZ compared to up to 120 so it's
definitely noticeable that the pro Max is smoother and if you have a tablet or
you had an older phone that had promotion you will notice the 60 HZ
being a little bit stuttery but if you have an experience a promotion before
you won't know the difference and it's going to be just fine so I wouldn't make
that a huge kind of uh deal if you're trying to decide now another difference
that we have is the ram last year it was the same but this year the pro Max has
bumped up to 8 gigs compared to the same 6 gigs on the plus model now how much of
a difference does that make in the real world and to be honest I could not tell
both of them did a great job with applications and I think just 6 gigs is
a pretty good middle ground where a couple years ago 4 gigs you could see a
difference now as far as performance looking at geekbench 6 in the single
core we had an 11% difference and in multicore we had a 12% difference to be
honest with you guys that does not really matter the a16 bionic is still a
great chip and it's going to be supported for another 5 years now in
terms of graphics performance here we had a difference of
18% and that is more noticeable but it's still not a massive difference years ago
we' have a much bigger difference now one thing I have to point out is the new
a17 Pro supports Ray tracing now which gives you more realistic Reflections and
shadows and it also has metal effects upscaling which makes it easier on the
actual chip to get better graphics with lower draws on the GPU now unfortunately
this is brand new we are waiting for games to come out to support this and
with that apple is bringing some console level games to the iPhone 15 Pro phones
only so you're going to have to have the A7 Pro so if you really enjoy gaming
that's something that I would think about now there is one thing that has
dominated the headlines with this launch that has to be overheating and
throttling people keep talking about the 15 Pro Maxes 15 Pro is getting super hot
so did I notice this between the two phones and I will say yes I did I did
notice that the 15 Pro Max feels hotter in the hand when you are using it and
that because the new titanium is not a great conductor of heat but aluminum is
a great one now using these dayto day I don't think that's a massive difference
even though when you're charging it gets hotter it feels hotter especially in
certain apps that I think still need some optimization but I did a 20-minute
throttling Extreme Gaming stress test and what is interesting is that both
phones dimed down to the same brightness um when I was running it so the plus
didn't really get any better in that regard now right at the end of the test
the max had noticeably more heat buildup it hit 47° C compared to 44 celsi and on
the back side you can actually see the outline of the A7 Pro chip and even a
bit of the charging coils now if we look at the results from this test the peak
frame rate is roughly 40% higher on the pro Max with the A7 Pro chip but this
phone with a titanium throttles so quickly that by the end of loop one the
overall performance difference is only 18% and then after the whole test was
done when they both heated up the performance difference was 19% so if
you're worried about the performance is getting super slow on a pro Max so
you're thinking about getting the plus well it ends up being the same once both
of them are heated up now the crazy difference though is that the 15 plus
cooled off very quickly and the screen went to full brightness after about 30
seconds while on the pro Max it took 2 minutes or longer showing just how good
aluminum is um at being able to cool off quickly and dissipate heat so if this is
something that you're really worrying about or you want to avoid that is is
definitely a plus for the cheaper 15 plus and now it is time to talk about
photo quality because this year we have some big differences the 15 plus went up
to 48 megapixels and it got some extra features and that is amazing because
that makes it a way better phone than the 14 plus but the pro Max now has that
5x lens and believe it or not there's actually benefits uh and negatives with
both phones so I have a bunch of pictures here to show you guys and
starting out with a 48 megapixel picture they look pretty much identical which is
awesome now looking at the selfie cameras here they actually have the same
exact hardware and both have Smart H5 so they practically look the same now
here's another regular photo it is 48 megapixel it looks great at Sunset and
crapping in I would say that the 15 plus looks slightly better and in this shot
right here if I punch in and I look once again the 15 plus has slightly more
detail now it actually has a newer sensor than the one in the 15 Pro Max
which is actually reused from last year so that could be it and now let's talk
about the zoom quality because the 15 plus does not have a dedicated zoom lens
this shot you guys already saw but I want you guys see the maximum Zoom you
could do which is 25 on the pro Max and 10 on the plus even here you see the
quality difference and then if I crop in that is a huge difference here the same
thing in this shot having the ability to zoom in much more is awesome and the
quality looks better too even though you're zoomed in more and based off this
sign you guys could see I can clearly read everything on the pro Max whereas
the plus it's all garbled up and messed up so if you find yourself zooming in
often the pro Max is much better now looking at some portrait shots this 1X
looks very similar but on the pro Max you can see where have a little bit
better dynamic range now thankfully both of them can take 2x shots now which was
a issue with the 14 plus and they look so dang close they look identical but
the pro Max now has that 5x telephoto lens and that allows you to get this
beautiful bokeh and remove some of the background compared to the plus which 2x
is the maximum you can get still looks good but it is not the same here's
another shot with the sun in the background I'm getting less um issues
with flaring and the image just looks really good with that 5x portrait and
the same thing here with this bunny shot I framed it the same but having that
extra blur looks really nice in certain cases now both Ultra wide lenses have
the same 12 megapixels but the 15 Pro Maxis has autofocus so here I could get
really close to that flower compared to the plus that is the closest I can get
of course you can crop but then the the quality goes down quite a bit and then
here we have a regular ultrawide shot and even looking like this without
cropping in the Pro Max looks a little bit more detailed but then if we look at
the center you definitely notice that detail and then on the edges the
difference is massive so not only do you have the macro mode the overall quality
of the lens is better on the pro Max now there is one issue with the pro Max that
the plus thankfully doesn't have even though it now shoots 48 megapixels you
guys could see here that the pro Max is blurred and that is because the minimal
focusing distance is not very good with this 48 megapixel uh camera whereas a
plus it looks great and because of this if you're shooting a document or a
closeup box right here the pro Max just doesn't do a good job where the plus
looks awesome and this is actually how close I can get so you guys can see that
difference now I talked about this issue last year when Apple launched this 48
megapixel and the pro phones and you can get around that by using the macro mode
but then the quality goes down or by shooting a wide photo and then cropping
in the quality also goes down and it's nice to know that you don't have that
issue with the plus so if you shoot a lot of documents um things that need
close distance that is really nice now going into night mode I thought that the
plus would get noticeably worse photos but the shots look pretty much the same
and only in the most extreme lighting the 15 Pro Max's slightly larger sensor
can pick up a little bit more light and that helps it out now one area where the
regular iPhones always struggled is low light portraits so here you guys could
see that the pro Max looks so much better and that's because it has that
lighter sensor and that allows it to enable night mode with portrait at the
same time and that makes the shots look much better if you like taking low light
portraits so bringing us back to the the original question should you get the 15
Pro Max or should you save $300 and get the 15 plus well last year
I said do not buy the 14 plus there was a massive difference there but this year
it is very interesting because Apple added enough to this phone while keeping
the base price the same that I would say for a lot of people this is an excellent
buy it has great battery life you have the dynamic island in the bright display
you have a much better camera before and of course you have USB type-c which
while it's not as fast as the pro Maxes most people aren't using it to transfer
data anyway so if you're on the fence and you don't need some of the extra
luxuries of the pro Max or that zoom lens I would say get the plus you will
not be disappointed but if you're going to keep your phone for a very long time
you have the money to spend this year the pro Max it's a lot lighter it's more
comfortable so you're not um missing out on that benefit of the plus series you
can spend the extra money but I was just very impressed with the plus this year
and I think it is a great buy you guys let me know your thoughts down in the
comments section below go ahead and check out case toies cases as well click
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this has been Max and I'll see you in the next
[Music] one