hi everyone Aaron here for zollotech and the iPhone 14 pro Max has been out for about a
week or so at this point and it's been my main device ever since I've been using it 100 of the
time with my SIM card or now esim inside of it and wanted to share the overall good and
bad experiences from everything from the battery life to the display and much more so we'll start
with the good and then we'll finish off talking about what might not be so good and then maybe
if you should pick one up or maybe stick with what you currently have now the display this year is a
big upgrade from the previous year now many people may or may not be talking about this but it's an
upgrade in many ways it seems to be a little bit sharper this year and also it's incredibly bright
so in outdoor sunlight it's very easy to see in fact I was using it outdoors and as you can see
here it looks fine there's no problem seeing it whatsoever it's nice and vibrant and goes up to 2
000 nits I even didn't have a problem with it dimming down as it was getting a little bit
warmer out so I didn't let it sit for any amount of time but in just using it regularly I never saw
it dimmed down and the phone didn't get too hot where it actually needed to pull that brightness
down of course it goes up to 1600 nits with HDR footage and just looks great overall it has great
viewing angles of course we have to talk about the dynamic Island though the dynamic Island at
the top is something you either love or you don't think is as good as the Notch and what Apple has
done is take the sensors make them smaller put them in sort of a pill is what we called it before
and then a hole punch for the camera but then they've filled in the pixels in between and then
just shut them off so it looks all dark across the top of it you can see in bright sunlight that
you can actually notice the difference between the two sensors but in regular use you don't
really see that so inside it's very hard to see unless you're in bright light and at the certain
Angle now also with this Dynamic Island Apple has actually done something that's very Apple
like and made it playful so whether you're in a song We'll go into this song press play swipe
home it goes up to the dynamic Island if we go into maybe a clock start a timer swipe home
it does the same thing and then splits the dynamic Island if you want to go back into that app tap on
the app if you want to get maybe a media player press and hold on music and you'll get the media
player and everything is nicely color matched to the album art to the waveform from the audio it
looks really great however in regular practice it's not something that I find other than it
looking great is something that I really want to use all the time because it's at the top of the
screen so it is a bit of a stretch to interact with pushing your thumb up there you really
need to use two hands and then sort of press one hand at the top while holding the phone normally
that's something that I think is really nice to have there but is something I find that might be
like the touch bar in that it's an information panel that you don't interact with too much but
it definitely looks really nice and is something that I appreciate especially how different app
developers have taken advantage of this I showed this in one other video but if we go into the app
Apollo which is for Reddit and within this app you you can see at the top they have something
called pixel Pals where you have a little pet that walks across the top of the dynamic Island
Walks from edge to edge actually goes to sleep and it's just sort of a little fun interactive
thing they've done with the dynamic Island I think if developers take advantage of this use this more
and more it'll be something I welcome as it's just sort of a fun playful thing that feels very Apple
so I do like this but there is one disadvantage to the dynamic Island and that's with YouTube so
if we go into YouTube and then maybe we play a video that's in 18 by nine aspect ratio what I
post many of my videos in it actually fills in around the I was going to say Notch but around
the dynamic Island so you can see it here where it's sort of cut into the video itself if we
expand the video it goes around the dynamic Island so that's something that may bother people and I
may need to change my content to 16x9 so it's not interfering with that but so far it does
interfere on all videos if they're in 18x9 also with this display pwm or pulse with modulation
has been a concern from many of you viewers so many of you have asked me is it a problem for
you and it wasn't a problem for me with the 13 Pro Max about 1 in 10 people are sensitive to it
and if you're not familiar with it it's how an OLED display controls brightness by flickering
the display faster or slower this display doesn't seem to pose any problem whatsoever and I've heard
that from a lot of you where it really doesn't bother your eyes at all in fact at 240 frames
per second it's almost undetectable so in many situations it's very hard to actually see that
means the pwm rate is so high that it shouldn't bother your eyes at all or they're just using DC
dimming and they're also using a one Hertz refresh rate when they drop it down when you're using an
always-on display and that's another good thing for this phone the always on display is something
I really like it's very helpful and dims based on the overall ambient light around you so if I turn
the lights off here you'll see that it will dim down a little bit more so maybe you're going to
sleep you've put it on your bed stand and it dims down when the lights come back on it will increase
the brightness using the sensors and it looks nice it has some color to it and it's better than any
other always on display I've seen however I would like some options for this to maybe just have the
clock but it doesn't have that you can turn it off as it will take a little hit to your battery about
one percent or less per hour but it's something that I would really consider leaving on as it's
a feature of the phone but either way if you're concerned about battery you could turn that off
but I think that's definitely a positive of this phone the a16 bionic this year doesn't
get a bump in Ram but it definitely is fast so anytime you're scrolling through anything
Pro motion just seems smoother everything is just incredibly smooth and when you're
playing music like I showed before you swipe up the interactions with the dynamic Islander
smooth going back and forth between apps is smooth they've sort of made this an iOS 6 experience as
far as overall smoothness and that's something I definitely appreciate so whether you're going
into something simple just as settings going back and forth scrolling going back to music
or just swiping something into the dynamic Island it's just super fluid all the time more so than I
remember in the past yes phones have been fast but there's something slightly different about
this one at least in my experience that I really appreciate as far as benchmarks it just kind of
blows anything else out of the water as far as that goes so as we wait for this to open we go
to the history you'll see even after installing certain updates it's just incredibly fast so much
faster than just about anything else out there as far as overall benchmarks and usability feels
the same as far as that goes in my experience I've heard from others this isn't the case but
I see this as a positive the back has not gotten warm hardly at all just during filming this video
it's barely warm and that's thanks to the four nanometer process you can see the overall heat
signature from the back of it really isn't that warm at all it's staying nice and cool and I've
had no issues I've heard from others that have had those issues but I personally have
had those issues the cameras this year get a massive upgrade but I think many people
overlooked the forward-facing camera Apple has given it auto focus and an upgraded sensor that
makes it one of the best cameras for video I've seen in a long time it makes it much easier where
you just put it on the camera and then point it at yourself and start talking to it and you
really don't need to do a whole lot of editing and post as far as colors or anything else it
looks good and is much better than previous years in fact the beginning of this video was filmed
with it without any external mic or anything and I'll film the end of the video with it as well
the rear cameras are great too of course we have a upgraded 48 megapixel sensor which makes some
incredible photos you can see a few of them here and so it takes all of that information and I
don't think you'll notice too much of a difference between this camera and a 13 Pro Max until you
zoom in once you zoom in you can see a lot more detail since you have more data there and you also
have up to 15 stops of dynamic range According to some people who have tested this further than I
can now that you have an upgraded Ultra wide which has great macro shots as well and then a telephoto
and one thing they've done that's really great this year is when you transition between those
when you're in video it's super smooth so when you go from 1X to 3x or back out to ultra wide
it's just super smooth overall so that's something I think is really underappreciated that just as
great if you're filming video and you want to zoom in and make it smooth and not have to do
that afterward action mode is also something they added this year and that works really well so you
can see here as I'm walking along with and without action mode what it looks like across this bridge
I think it looks pretty good it's great especially if you were running maybe across a backyard it
really stabilizes that footage but you will lose a little bit of quality just because it has to
sort of cut into the video to make that work and you can see when you turn it on it drops down to
2.8 K so you can upscale that to 4K but it will lose some of that resolution when it's actually
trying to stabilize overall but it does a great job we also have 4K in cinematic mode this year
so that's a nice addition something that I don't use too much just because I don't use cinematic
mode I prefer to just film everything myself but either way it's an available option now if you
want it also those who use the flash will find it much improved so I think they'll appreciate
that quite a bit if you do use a flash it's not something I typically use but if you use it it
definitely looks better than previous years now we also have to mention a couple other positives
as far as car crash detection so we have car crash detection that's not something I'm willing to test
you'd physically need to be in a car crash and also it listens from the microphone and senses
with barometric pressure and then High G-Force that you've been in a crash and then will alert
authorities if you need to need them to know or you could cancel that if it wasn't anything too
serious but it's nice to have that built in of course satellite connectivity comes to our phones
but that's later on so there's no way to test that just yet but having that option maybe you're in
the middle of nowhere you've lost signal at least you can reach some authorities or let someone
know where you are that's something I definitely think is a positive overall connectivity seems to
be quite good for me this year they've updated the modem and you'll see I have two bars of 5G
you see as far as the overall speed that can vary greatly but I've noticed I've had less drops using
this device and calls seem to be clearer overall you'll see with 5G I'm hitting over well I hit 180
plus megabits per second for just a moment there and that's only with two bars in a brick building
so 80 megabits per second is more than fast enough you only need about 15 or so to watch a 4K video
and with uploads we're hitting about 11 megabits per second or so on LTE I would get about 60 as
far as the overall download here so I'd say that's pretty good given that I'm inside a brick building
and it works really well for me I've had no issues whatsoever and notice a little bit faster speed
this here Apple's upgraded Bluetooth to Bluetooth 5.3 and with that I've noticed a little bit of a
difference whether it just be the Bluetooth modem they're using overall whether that's the new sort
of standard they're using I noticed connectivity seems to be better so if we open up airpods Pro
here give it a second to connect I noticed that the connections are more consistent and seem to
have less issues so it did take a moment to connect I really haven't noticed a difference
as far as that goes but with other Bluetooth accessories such as car keys so I use a Tesla app
to connect to my car when I walk up close to it I notice that it actually unlocks more consistently
without any issues in previous versions the 13 Pro Max I would have to actually sometimes go into the
up and then unlock the car now it consistently allows me to unlock it even from further
distances so I've noticed that not just with that app but also air pods and other Bluetooth
connected devices it seems to be a little bit better this year now before we talk about the
negative things or bad things overall with the 14 pro Max let's talk a little bit about something
that's in between good and bad and that's the battery with the settings set up as default and
always on display left on I get through a day with about the same amount left around 50 percent left
in my battery however when I compared it to the previous year looking at the battery statistics
it was actually about an hour less battery despite Apple saying it should be about an hour more or
the same so an hour more playing video or about the same doing everything else that's due to the
more efficient chipset inside however my battery statistics prove that it's about an hour less at
least for my usage so if we take a look at the last seven days you'll see I had three hours and
46 minutes on one day with 3 hours and 53 minutes of screen off time and use about 55 percent of my
battery life based off of that looking year over year on the previous review that was done after
the same amount of time it's about an hour less of screen on time so that's something
I'm experiencing just from My overall use you may experience more it depends on what you use and if
you leave the always on display on I personally like it so I'm going to leave it on but if you're
running out of battery by the end of the day you may need to disable some of those settings now as
far as the overall battery size Apple actually made it smaller so getting similar battery life
or a little less was to be expected at 4 323 milliamp hours but it's just something to note
now as far as the first negative thing I would say that has to do with price outside of the
USA the price in the USA is the exact same so it's still an expensive phone but they haven't
bumped the price up at all however outside the USA it's significantly more in some countries
whether that's due to different currency changes or just the overall tax rates and things like that
it's definitely more expensive in other countries and for a lot of people that's going to stop them
from upgrading this year so it was something worth mentioning also some people may not like that the
camera bump is larger for me it's not a problem but some people that really don't like it well
if you're not into cameras then this might not be for you because it has a huge camera bump on it
something that personally is negative to me or bad to me is the app will remove the SIM card tray now
this may not bother a lot of people but if you're someone like me that tests phones it's just easier
to pop that SIM card out and put it in another phone to test out the phone yes you can press a
button to transfer it but I would prefer to have a physical Sim the rest of the world gets it the
USA doesn't so they've just put a spacer inside according to those that have torn down the phone
and there's nothing there they've just filled the void with a spacer I would rather have the SIM
card tray this year but I do think that's a bit of an experiment maybe for the iPhone 15 I'm not
sure what the point is there but I would rather have the SIM card tray also another negative for
me is the lightning cable I really want this to be USBC for faster transfer speeds to me it makes
the camera using prores almost pointless because it takes so long to get the footage off the phone
so when you're using prores it uses a tremendous amount of space and this is a 512 gigabyte model
and with all my apps on here I have 52 minutes of footage left but to get that 52 minutes of footage
off could take up to an hour Sometimes using lightning if we had USBC it definitely would
be better so a faster way whether it be Wireless through AirPlay or airdrop rather that would be
much more welcome in my opinion than just having lightning here for the transferring large files
so hopefully we'll see that next year and then the final negative or bad thing maybe the color
selection this year purple is the new color and if you don't like purple you have the option for
space black and then your regular silver and gold colors so for me I would personally prefer maybe a
different color the purple does look really nice but it's not for everyone I do like purple I'll
probably continue using it but a different color selection maybe orange like we've heard for years
might be something that people would welcome a little more I haven't heard many people say
bad things about purple but I've heard more than normal that I would with even Sierra blue or or
any of the other colors over the past few years now if you're wondering if you should upgrade to
a 14 pro Max or maybe hold on to your 13 Promax it really comes down to a couple of different
things whether you care about the camera or the overall display the dynamic island or if you don't
care about any of those things well then I would just wait until the following year usually after
three years Apple redesigns their phones anyway so with the iPhone 15 I would expect a full redesign
whether that be they make the camera flush to the back they increase the battery life or do
something completely different that's what Apple typically does after three years so if you don't
care about the features as far as the camera and the display well then I would probably hold off
you'll get iOS updates for the next few years and then you can see what Apple comes out with
next year or the following year but if you care a lot about the camera or you care a lot about
the dynamic island or the display itself I would definitely upgrade for me those are reasons to
upgrade I can use them for YouTube videos in fact we're recording in 4k cinematic mode on
the forward-facing camera now so that gives you an idea of what it looks like if none of the things
I mentioned though matter like I said the camera or the display just wait until the next year or
maybe a couple years whatever works for you let me know your thoughts overall on the 14 pro Max
or the 14 did you pick up any of the phones are you waiting for yours I'd love to hear from you
in the comments below if you haven't subscribed already though please subscribe and if you enjoyed
the video please give it a like as always thanks for watching I'll see you next time thank you