After spending some quality time with the iPhone 12 mini, I am extremely impressed,
and not only the obvious, like the small size and weight, but it actually outperforms my
12 Pro max in a multiple ways that I was not expecting, which I’ll cover in just a bit.
Hey Guys its Max, in this video I’ll be covering every single difference I found when
I ditched my iPhone 12 Pro Max and swapped over to the 12 mini, and I have to be honest
I’m quite torn at this point as to which one I should use long term, because I love
them both.
My SIM is currently in the Pro Max but I’m swapping back to the Mini, and here's why.
Let's get the most obvious out of the way at the start, this thing feels absolutely
INCREDIBLE in the hand. Sure the 12 and 12 Pro are also smaller than the Max but to me
the size difference doesn’t make a big enough effect on comfort to make it worth it, but
it absolutely does with the Mini.
Now let me know in the comments if you’re like me and you love using your phone when
you’re laying in bed late at night or early in the morning.
It might seem trivial, but the 12 Mini is AMAZING for this, not only do my hands not
get tired when I’m holding the phone out watching videos, but when the inevitable time
comes and you drop it as you doze off, trust me, it hurts no where near as bad.
And that's because the 12 Pro Max weighs close twice as much as the mini, now ok that might
be obvious, but if you do the math the Pro Max’s display is technically only 25% larger,
while the phone weighs 75% more so that is an impressive difference.
With that, the 12 mini doesn’t feel cheap at all like most small light phones do, it
still feels substantial and premium, and if you want to be even more comfortable in the
hand, there’s 1 accessory that makes it feel out of this world, and that's this, Apple's
overpriced wallet case.
I know it's gotten a lot of hate with people saying it falls off too easily, and that's
only partially true. On my 12 Pro Max it's honestly a pain, it’s constantly twisting
and every so often it falls off when I’m putting it in or taking it out of my pants,
but with the Mini it's phenomenal.
Not only does it fill in the little space between the phone and your hand making the
phone fit perfectly, it also provides more grip and gives you the nice feel of natural
leather without covering the premium sides like a full case.
Because it aligns perfectly with the frame, it doesn’t twist and I haven’t had it
fall off even once because there's no gap between the back and the wallet like the Max.
If you have or are getting a mini I’d definitely give it a shot, and if it's too pricey I’ll
link some cheaper alternatives in the description, but I wouldn’t recommend it for the Max.
We talked about size, weight, and comfort, and now let's talk about most people's biggest
concern buying a mini, the battery life. The Max weighs 75% more than the mini, and the
battery is 60% larger than the mini’s, and at the same time it has to power a display
that is not only larger but also has 44% more pixels and one that gets brighter as well,
so what was my real world experience with the battery life?
To be honest, it wasn’t as bad as I expected. Now, yes the Max smokes it, but I expected
the mini to be dead by 3PM everyday like my old iPhone 6s when I had it, but it was quite
a bit better.
Even with my normal heavy use the 12 Pro Max lasts me all day just like the 11 Pro Max
and it usually has between 10-20% battery life when I set it down to charge. When I
was using the 12 Pro it would reach close to 0% between 6-7PM so I would have to charge
them mid-day.
Surprisingly, the 12 mini was only about an hour off with my usage patterns, getting low
between 5 to 6pm, and I don’t know about you, if I have to top off during the day It
doesn’t really matter if it's an hour earlier.
With that it also charges faster than the 12 with a 20W, being almost charged in 1 hour,
and even though it only accepts 12W from magsafe charging, it charges just as fast as the 12.
If you’re a heavy user and still want a full days battery like I do, the Max is your
only option, but if you’re a light user, or you don’t mind popping your phone on
a wireless charger during the day or topping off the Mini’s battery was way better than
I expected, but with that said, there wasn’t always such a big battery gap between the
Mini and the Pro Max.
When I was gaming, the battery life between the two were surprisingly much closer, just
over an hour of difference which didn’t really make sense to me, atleast at first.
Both of these phones have very similar performance since they both have the same 5nm A14 Bionic
chip. I ran some tests and in Geekbench and interestingly the Max constantly gets 2 to
400 more points in the CPU test, but graphics are nearly identical.
Because of that, this is the most powerful tiny gaming phone on the market and it can
play any iOS game at full settings, but what really surprised me is how it performed compared
to the iPhone 12 Pro Max. I maxed out all of my settings playing Call
of duty mobile, and it had no issues at all and even after a long session the back of
the phone wasn’t that hot and the phone performed constantly which I wasn’t expecting.
I thought it would get too hot with the same powerful a14 bionic in such a small body,
and the screen would end up automatically dimming to cut down on heat but it didn’t.
That is the biggest annoyance with my 12 Pro Max, If I max out my game settings, after
about a half hour it gets very hot and the screen locks at less than half brightness
but the mini didn’t seem to have that issue.
The explanation I can think of is that the much larger display of the Max puts out more
heat, and with that it has 44% more pixels which means the graphics have to work harder
and heat up more.
And since the mini has less pixels you might think its less detailed, but because its smaller,
its actually Apples most detailed screen with a pixel density of 476ppi compared to 458.
But enough with the praises for the mini, let's get into the biggest issues that I discovered
and here's the most annoying one for me personally.
The display quality is amazing, HDR videos look fantastic thanks to the sharp oled screen,
but the speakers just don’t match up to the fantastic display, take a listen for yourself.
Not only is the mini much quieter, but it sounds a lot worse as well. The mids miss
a lot of richness and bass is pretty much non existent so you’re seeing a gorgeous
late 2020 image but the sound is from a 2016 iphone.
Now of course you can use headphone if you’re watching yourself, but other complain is the
display size which maybe I shouldn’t even bring up since you know you’re buying a
small phone, but the difference in immersion between these phones is massive.
Where the screen size matters even more is when playing games. Although the phone doesn’t
get as hot the gaming experience is much better on the Pro max, especially in competitive
games because my thumbs take up so much of the screen and everything is much smaller.
Talking this further, even when I’m texting at times I hit the wrong buttons because the
keyboard is so much smaller on the mini, but if you have small hands then it shouldn’t
be an issue.
As far as most other use, I was surprised that the smaller screen didn’t matter as
much as I expected. For most optimized websites you don’t see that much more on the Pro
Max, everything is just smaller on the mini so the extra screen real-estate isn’t used
to its full potential.
Now I did find my myself hold the phone a bit closer to my face than with the max to
compensate. That also flows ties into ram and being a power user.
The 12 Mini has 4GB of ram just like the 12, were the Pro models have 6 and its been a
great step up from the 11 Pro where some background apps would have to reload when I tried to
switch back to them.
So did I notice that issue with the mini? Honestly not really. It could be that I didn’t
use it long enough but with that the times that I would really push multitasking is when
I’m away from my macs in the evening, and I found myself picking up my ipad way more
often which makes sense.
With the 12 Pro Max the screen is so big that you don’t really want or need to use an
iPad, but with the mini, the size difference of even an ipad mini is massive so if you
have an ipad or want to buy one, I think you’ll definitely use it much more if you have a
small phone like the 12 mini.
The last thing that I want to cover are the cameras, because we’re going from the smallest
cheapest model to the biggest best one with triple cameras and larger sensors.
There are some features that I know I’ll miss, like night time portrait mode and the
better quality of the zoom images, but for the vast majority of the shots I take the
quality difference is very minimal thanks the the mini having the same quality as even
the 12 Pro in most cases.
I actually did a very in depth comparison showing every single camera difference between
the 12, 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max both the good and the bad, and the 12 mini has the same
camera as the 12 so if you want to see it click right over there.
As for me, I’m going to put my sim back into the mini and try to make up my mind on
which is more worth it since I love big screens. Let me know you’re thoughts below and click
above to subscribe if you want to see my Pro max long term review, and I’ll see you in
the next video.