Both my brother Max, the other host of this channel, and I have been using the iPhone
12 Pro Max for over a month, and we now have a good amount of experience with it,
so in this video, I want to share the Top 10
Problems or issues that we’ve noticed after using the Pro Max for a month, and I’ll give
you some very interesting conclusions and purchasing advice at the end of this video.
Now before I begin, I do want to mention that for Max, his biggest concern was the larger size,
and he was actually considering buying the regular 12 Pro instead, but because of the
camera differences, he went with the Max model, and as it turns out.. The camera has
been quite disappointing, so before I get into those problems, let’s start with problem #1.
First off, one of the biggest problems is the lack of a 120hz display,
since so many other premium flagship phones already have high-refresh rate
displays. Even mid range phones these days have higher than 60hz refresh rates.
The OnePlus 7 Pro was released almost 2 years ago at a $669 price tag, and it comes with a
90hz display. It’s embarrassing that we’re about to enter into 2021 and Apple doesn’t
at least have a 90hz display on their $1100 flagship iPhone, so that’s definitely a problem.
But thankfully, rumors are pointing to next year’s Pro models getting 120hz refresh rate.
Now getting into Problem #2, it has to do with the new square sides. While I absolutely love
them because they make the phone feel new, unique and they help with grip in the hand,
there are definitely some problems with them.
First off, they make the iPhone 12’s look very thick, despite actually being thinner this year.
Because of those square edges, the Pro Max kind of digs into your hand while using one-handed,
so you can’t reach as far up on the display as with the iPhone 11’s.
And it’s also less comfortable if you’re holding it in landscape mode
since it can dig into your pinky. So it can be pretty
annoying if you’re holding it like that for an extended period of time.
On top of that, the new flat sides show fingerprints
much more easily than before. This is a broll shot of my iPhone
without cleaning it off or intentionally adding fingerprints. It’s like this all the time,
so I’ve noticed that I spend more time than ever before trying to keep it looking clean.
Moving onto problem #3, it really sucks that we no longer get a charger in the box.
The missing headphones, I don’t really care for because I usually just keep them in the box,
but as for the charging brick, I was really excited to get one so I can plug it into an outlet
somewhere else in my house so I have more options to choose from, but of course, that didn’t happen.
And since the current bricks use USB-C, I could’ve actually used it for charging other USB-C devices,
so it sucks that Apple will no longer be shipping out any more charging bricks.
Now let’s finally get into the cameras with problem #4.
Something unique this year is that the telephoto lens on the 12 Pro Max
finally has a longer optical zoom range, 2.5X instead of just 2x on the regular
Pro. This was actually one of the reasons why Max chose to buy the Max model instead.
However, there are definitely multiple problems with it.
First off, to make the longer zoom possible, the aperture was downgraded from F2.0 to F2.2,
which basically takes in less light. Because of that, the quality of zoom shots is actually worse
on the Pro Max, which completely ruins the point of the longer telephoto zoom lens.
On top of that, Night mode telephoto shots take longer because it needs more time to collect light
compared to the regular Pro, and taking it even further, more zoomed in shots are
harder to stabilize, also adding to the time it takes to take a night mode shot.
I also feel like telephoto portrait shots are less convenient
because of the extra zoom, because you have to move back further to get the subject in frame.
So because of all of that, I found myself almost always just using
the regular wide camera for portrait shots, and it shouldn’t be like that.
Even for daytime photos, I struggled to find an
improvement in quality between the 12 Pro’s maximum 10x zoom and the Pro
Max’s 12x zoom. I honestly expected better zoom quality, but it’s simply not there.
Now it’s not just the telephoto lens that’s different on the Pro Max,
Apple made a huge deal about the sensor on the wide camera being 47%
larger than on the Pro, so that brings us into problem #5.
Apple said that the Pro Max gives you 87% better low-light photos, but when I compared them,
I honestly didn’t see that big of a difference. And for night mode shots,
it does help, but it’s not that big of a deal.
I just noticed that Night Mode shots take a shorter amount of time to take,
which is very convenient since you don’t have to wait as long,
but in terms of quality, it was hard to tell a difference.
Now when you’re taking photos with the wide camera during the daytime,
it is extremely difficult to notice any difference at all.
On top of that, the Pro Max gets the new sensor-shift optical stabilization,
which does an excellent job stabilizing footage, but the 12 Pro also does a really good job as
well, and to the average person, they probably wouldn’t notice a difference.
On top of that, we’ve noticed that the Pro Max’s wide camera is much worse in terms of
the minimum focusing distance. The regular Pro can focus much closer to the subject,
and because of that, the bokeh in the background actually looks bigger for macro shots.
Now problem #6 is one that really really annoys me, and that is lens flare
when shooting photos or videos at night.
Check out this video recorded on the 12 Pro Max,
as you can see, the lights are reflecting off of the lens itself and causing really bad flaring.
This is extremely distracting when trying to record a video of lights like this, or maybe
something like a christmas light show. An $1100 iPhone shouldn’t be having this bad of a problem.
Now this also happens for photos, like this one of my son in front of the fireplace.
There is a really distracting flare from the fire that’s positioned
right in front of him, and it kind of ruins the photo.
This is actually a much bigger issue on the 12 Pro Max, specifically,
because the camera lenses are much larger and the lens glass itself
sticks out further than the exterior metal rings, which causes light to reflect off of them.
And in this comparison, you can see how the Pro Max is worse than the other models,
so it’s definitely been causing problems over the past month.
Moving onto problem #7, it has to do with MagSafe, and MagSafe accessories.
When we first got the MagSafe wallet and tested it out on the iPhone 12 Pro,
it worked pretty well and we didn’t really notice much issues with it being bumped out of place
or falling off when putting it into your pocket.
However, with the 12 Pro Max, the wallet is noticeably worse,
and I think it’s because there is extra deadspace on the back of the iPhone,
so there’s more room for it to move around and get out of place.
We actually confirmed that theory by using the Wallet with the iPhone 12 Mini,
where the edges of the wallet are perfectly flush with the sides of the Mini.
And because of that, it’s extremely hard to accidentally bump the wallet
out of place because your hand is supporting it from the other side.
So the wallet experience is by far the worst on the Pro Max,
which is a bit disappointing. Max actually found himself putting the wallet into his
other pocket instead of being on his iPhone, which ruins the whole point.
Now the MagSafe problems don’t end there, Apple’s new MagSafe charger is problem #8.
For $40, it’s simply not worth it at all. Yes, it’s convenient that it attaches magnetically,
but the charging speed is unbearably slow. Max made a crazy detailed charging comparison video
and he found that even with the new 20W USB-C charging brick,
MagSafe was ONLY 15 minutes faster than the old 5W charging brick while charging from 0-100%.
Yes, it was quite a bit faster in the beginning of the test, but when you hear 15W MagSafe charging,
you’d expect it to be just a little bit slower than 20W cable charging,
but that ended up finishing the test a full hour sooner than MagSafe.
So in my personal opinion, the MagSafe charger is a problem because it charges
way slower than Apple is leading people to believe.
For mistake #9, it has to do with overheating.
The new iPhone 12’s come with the latest A14 Bionic chip, which is made using TSMC’s
brand new 5nm technology which is super efficient.
However, Max was doing some call of duty mobile gaming in a very bright barber shop,
so the display automatically brightened up, and he noticed that after just 10 minutes,
the display dimmed because of overheating.
This is an issue because the 5nm chip is supposed to be more efficient and run more cool, so we
thought that we’d never have these overheating issues anymore, but that’s not the case.
Other phone manufacturers like Samsung have been implementing cooling solutions like a
built-in vapor chamber to reduce overheating problems, but Apple doesn’t seem to care,
so it’s a bit annoying when you have to deal with these issues on such an expensive flagship phone.
And finally, let’s get into Problem #10.
The iPhone 12 Pro Max is still using the lightning port, and we’re honestly getting a bit sick of it.
While every other device on the market is moving over to USB-C ports, Apple refuses to switch.
If the iPhone had a USB-C port, everything from file transfers to charging
would be much more convenient. I’d love to be able to grab my MacBook charging cable
and quickly charge up my iPhone, but I can’t because it uses Lightning.
Now, even the iPad Air 4 uses USB-C, but not the iPhone, which is starting to get very annoying
because we now know just how much better USB-C is than Lightning, in basically every single way.
So there you guys have it, that was our Top 10 Problems with the iPhone 12
Pro Max after a full month of use, so if you agree or disagree with any of those,
comment your thoughts down below, and click that circle above to subscribe for our full
iPhone 12 Pro Max review coming soon. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you in the next one!