Hi everyone Aaron here for Zollotech and this is the iphone 12 pro max i've been using it as my
main phone for the past week or so and wanted to share my overall thoughts with you whether
you should pick one up whether you should stick with the smaller size iphones or maybe stick with
your older phone this year now the first thing is this entire video is being recorded in full auto
from the back of the iphone 12 pro max camera i'm not using an external microphone and this
time i'm recording in 4k 60 but not in hdr so i did the iphone 12 pro video in hdr and this
one is not so more people can see what it's like and it's in full auto all i did was hit record
after setting it on a tripod and i'm using the microphone and everything from the phone itself
now the first thing is the price of the phone we get 64 gigabytes extra storage this year for the
base price so 1099 will get you 128 gigabytes of storage and then you can go up to 512 if you want
to for about 1400 it's not necessarily a value but you are getting extra storage for the same price
so that's a really nice thing to see this year and then also of course there's the design the design
is a design that i really like i'm glad they went back to the squared off edges but that makes this
phone feel huge and everyone i've shown this to has said the same thing they're surprised that
even if they've been using an 11 pro max when they pick this up they're surprised how big it feels
the squared off edges do make it a little bit easier to grip but it's super huge in fact it's
so big i may stick with the iphone 12 pro this year now there are advantages to this phone
so we'll talk about those in a moment but the overall size is big it's taller than the 11 pro
max it's also slightly heavier and if you're using a case it just makes it that much bigger it's
easier to grip though because of those squared off edges i think it looks and feels more premium
and then of course you have that new pacific blue color and this is graphite and you have
gold and silver so i think it's a great look for this phone we went back to the iphone 4 style and
it's something i've been wanting for years so i'm glad they did it now the next thing is the cameras
the cameras on this phone are really great in fact the main camera is a 1.6 aperture which gives you
really shallow depth of field and i think for many pictures you don't even need portrait mode so for
example here's a photo i took of a flower and it looks really good with natural background blur or
bokeh and then here's one in portrait mode and the one i took in portrait mode i don't think looks as
good if you get nice and close with your camera to that subject i think you're going to have
enough background blur that it looks natural looks good and professional as well and so i
think that's a great feature of this camera that means the sensor itself is actually on a float
instead of the lens sort of floating around and we see this in larger mirrorless cameras the cameras
i've normally used gh5 and a7s3 from sony all have sensor shift stabilization or ibis and what it
does is puts that sensor on a float and so when you're walking around it sort of centers itself
to try and give you stabilized footage now in my test walking down a trail it looks pretty good
but i don't see any noticeable improvements over the iphone 12 pro now that may be because they
have a larger sensor and a larger lens so it was better to do the sensor stabilization instead of
the lens stabilization but either way it looks good it's stabilized i don't know that it's a
huge advantage over the 12 pro for example they look basically the same and of course you have
night mode so that kind of makes up the difference using the processor but you do have lidar or laser
autofocus basically in the back of the phone that helps you get better focus at night better depth
and it's just great for things like not only depth sensing here but also augmented reality
now of course you have a regular camera a wide and a telephoto this year you get a little bit
extra telephoto with the larger camera as well 2.5 optical zoom and then up to 12x
sort of zooming into the sensor and digital zoom so it looks okay compared to the 12 pro
you get a little bit of extra length it's still kind of blurry but at the 2.5 it's pretty nice
and i think it works well and of course you've got portrait mode on all of them and night mode on
them as well for night mode portraits now with the cameras of course they're incredible cameras and i
think we're going to see even more with apple pro raw that's coming out with ios 14.3 it looks like
so we should see that in the future with more data from the sensor 12 bit of data or 12 bit depth
and it should be really interesting to see what we can do with that later on hopefully in a month or
so we'll see that update now other than that we've got some crazy computational photography going on
here that really makes everything just look sharp including this video it's everything's in auto
like i said and so you're using the new a14 bionic which has a new neural engine in it to help even
more with that computational photography and other tasks and it's got six gigs of ram in this phone
so it's just super fast all the time there's no slowdowns and it's really just a smooth experience
what you would expect from iphone and so there's no compromises here if you want the best the
fastest get the pros with the bigger ram they're super fast and will be updated for years to come
probably at least five years like we're seeing with all the other iphones from years past
now the display on the 12 pro max is 6.7 inches it has a very high pixel density it's oled and it has
great viewing angles it goes up to 800 nits of brightness so it's easily viewable in sunny
weather and it goes up to 1200 nits when you're playing hdr content it has very vibrant colors
it's very deep blacks and it does use pwm so for those of you concerned that the screen
actually flickers what that means is the screen is always flickering to control brightness except
at the very highest brightnesses so the screen is flickering you can't see this with your eyes
but at 240 frames per second slow-mo you can see that it's flickering and this can actually bother
some people and cause headaches however with the 12-series lineup of phones since they all have
similar oled panels i really don't experience this problem i have no eye strain no headaches caused
from the display but this may be a concern for some people now this here we also have ceramic
shield which makes the phone four times less likely to break in the event that it's dropped
so the glass is a little bit stronger however you still will get scratches on it like any other
glass so i didn't find that it was any better at preventing scratches than the 11 pro max
at least in my experience because the iphone 12 for example had a scratch on it and i'm not even
sure where it came from i've been very careful with these phones the 12 pro max doesn't have any
scratches on it but if you're concerned about that be sure to put a screen protector however it seems
to be a little bit less likely to scratch compared to last year's but still it's glass and if you
have something that's a little bit harder than glass you of course will be able to scratch it so
just keep that in mind and definitely get a screen protector if you're concerned about it
now the speakers are nice and loud they provide nice wide audio and at the highest volumes they
go about two decibels louder than last year's iphones from what i've found however at those
high volumes it is a little more tinny sounding than last year's i think there's a little bit more
bass or depth to the sound with last year's iphone 11 pro max maybe that's due to the frame design
but i do find that these are clearer at higher volumes see we have the launch pad the finder
icon safari everything has a little bit of a refresh music has been updated to match ios 14
and so things have been refreshed quite a bit the dock also sort of floats it's no longer attached
to the bottom so i guess it doesn't really matter that most people aren't going to be using them
at those high volumes but in general they sound great and have a great wide stereo sound and it's
great to watch videos on if you're watching hdr content it's an amazing experience especially if
you're using headphones such as airpods pro with spatial audio i think that gives you the best
experience so most people will probably be using air pods or some other wireless headphones anyway
now as far as the battery life well i know that's a major concern for a lot of people
this year's battery life i'm personally getting about an hour less time than i was with the 11
pro max it just depends on your usage though in some tests such as that from aaron from mr who's
the boss he just ran a standardized test where he got more battery life with the 12 pro max
so this really comes down to how you use the phone but in general i would expect about 10
to 11 hours of screen on time with normal use i was getting up to 12 with the 11 pro max
now i'm getting around 8 to 11 depending on the day and what i'm doing if you're recording a lot
of video or you're playing a lot of games it's going to be less of course now you do have fast
charging so if you need to bump that back up even though it's a smaller battery you can still get 50
in 30 minutes now magsafe is available for all the iphone 12 models this year and i've been using it
and i have some mixed thoughts on it while it's available and it's convenient it charges at 15
watts on the 12 pro max i think it's really nice but it's not for everyone if you already have a
qi compatible wireless charger keep that and keep charging like that if you need a wireless charger
that's centered charges a little bit faster and you want to use your phone while you're actually
charging well then yes go ahead and pick one up because they're convenient however i handed one
to my wife to use with a 12 pro and she actually didn't like it she decided to go back to her other
phone or her other charger with her phone because when you put it down you can just pick it back up
with magsafe you have to physically disconnect it i know that's kind of nitpicking at that but
it is something that some people will notice and maybe an inconvenience so if you need it to stick
to something somewhere of course you can just use magsafe if you don't care about that then i might
skip it this year now this year all iphone 12s get 5g now in the united states we have millimeter
wave and this is really only for verizon customers and some at t customers it really doesn't affect
me as i don't have either of those carriers but if you have verizon and you're in the right city
on the right street corner you may be able to get those fast speeds however regular sub six
5g or 5g in general is pretty fast depending on where you live where i live it's about double the
speed of what we get with lte so the phone will automatically intelligently switch between 4g or
lte and 5g and as you can see here the lte speeds are about half of what i was getting with 5g so 5g
is definitely beneficial where i live but it's not for everyone yet so i wouldn't run out and
pick up the iphone 12 pro max or any of the iphone 12s just for 5g there's a lot of other benefits
to pick one up for but 5g is not something i would just run out and have to upgrade for but it's nice
to have the future proofing when it's everywhere and widely available now should you pick up an
iphone 12 pro max well that really depends on what your use case is if you need a really long
all-day battery well then sure pick one up however this may be way too big of a phone for most people
it's really hard to convey in these videos how big this is or how big it feels due to the squared off
edges it's a huge phone and i may just use the iphone 12 pro this year and i've used the iphone
12 pro max the iphone 6s plus since it came out or the 6 plus and this one just feels huge compared
to all of those so i'm still debating which one's going to be my normal phone every day but this
may or may not be the best choice for you let me know what you think of the overall quality of the
camera and microphone in the comments below like i said i recorded this entire video using the rear
facing camera of the 12 pro max and so i'd love to hear your thoughts about it in the comments below
if you'd like to get your hands on the wallpaper i use throughout the video of course i'll link that
in the description like i normally do and if you haven't subscribed already please subscribe and
if you enjoyed the video please give it a like as always thanks for watching i'll see you next time