It’s been about 4 months since Apple revealed the iPhone 13 lineup at their September event
and ever since I got my hands on the 13 Pro Max, I’ve been using it every single day and
I’ve gotta say that I’ve never been as satisfied with an iPhone as I am right now with this one.
So in this 4-month review, I’m gonna do something completely different,
with the goal of helping you decide if it’s still worth upgrading to one of the 13 Pro models,
or simply holding off for the iPhone 14 Pro, which has the chance of coming with
features like a pill-shaped cutout instead of the notch, and maybe even a USB-C port,
like I talked about in a previous video which you should definitely check out!
But with all of that said, the way I’m gonna do this review is by making a list
of every single update or upgrade that came with the 13 Pro Max and then sharing my thoughts
on which features actually MATTER to me after 4 months,
with the best features being saved for last, so let’s get right into it!
First up, we have the changes that mattered the least to me,
like Apple selling a 1TB iPhone which I definitely don’t need, and things like the Dual
eSIM feature which doesn’t matter to me since I don’t need to have more than one cellular line.
There’s also the new Sierra Blue color, which I don’t really like,
so I ended up going with Graphite and covering up the back with a leather skin from Nomad which has
been incredibly impressive and resilient, and no they’re not sponsoring this video!
But getting into the real new features, we have one that really didn’t matter to me at all,
and that’s Photographic styles, which allows you to apply a pre-filter to all of your photos,
but I honestly haven’t touched it once since my original review because I personally like
the default color profile of this year’s 13 Pro, so I don’t really need this feature.
After that, we have the new ProRes recording format,
and to me, this is still a gimmick because I don’t really shoot videos with my iPhone
with the intention of them going into a professional video or anything like that.
And since the file size is absolutely massive, I decided that it’s not even worth it for me to
enable this mode for the regular everyday stuff that I shoot like videos of my kid.
Another upgrade we got this year that Apple didn’t really talk about
was the fact that the iPhone 13 Pro Max can now accept up to 27W of charging power.
So because of that, I went ahead and ordered an Anker 30W charger just so
I don’t feel like I’m missing out on potentially faster-charging speed.
But to be honest, because of the incredible battery life of this phone,
which I’m gonna get into in a minute, I haven’t really been using this adapter that often.
However, when I need to top up the battery quickly,
I’m constantly blown away by how fast it charges up compared to how long it used
to take a couple of years ago, so this new faster charging can definitely be useful.
And now talking a little bit about the cameras, the selfie camera this year got a small upgrade
with support for some of the features the rear cameras get, like ProRes recording,
but the one that I’ve actually noticed is the jump up to smart HDR 4, which gives it
a noticeable improvement in terms of high dynamic range performance.
So now, you are much less likely to have blown out clouds in the background,
which is a small but helpful improvement, and I also noticed that sun flaring isn’t
nearly as bad of a problem as it was last year, so that’s very nice!
Now one new feature that I thought was gonna be a
massive game-changer is the new Cinematic video recording mode.
So I tested it a few times and I got some really cool-looking shots like this one of
my wife and son walking around downtown. I also noticed that the stabilization
is absolutely incredible, making it look like you’re holding a gimbal.
However, it still has issues with making it look natural since the blur edging
messes up sometimes and that totally ruins the feel.
In my opinion, this is gonna be a feature that Apple will fine-tune
over the next few years, but it’s just not ready yet.
And because it’s limited to 1080P quality,
I just can’t get myself to use it because I know that the phone is capable of shooting in
4K, so I feel like I’m missing out in terms of quality when I use cinematic mode.
Next up, we have the new Macro mode, which was very impressive and exciting
when Apple first revealed it, but I just haven’t been really using it that much.
Now initially, it was really messed up and buggy because it worked automatically
and you couldn’t control the lens that it switched to.
But Apple quickly fixed that issue and has added a button for macro, and it works like a charm.
And what I really like about it is that you can get some really
cool shots like this one of a toy car with a unique wide-angle perspective.
But still, it’s sometimes hard to get the focus right if you’re too close,
but it can really help you see tiny details like the stamp on the inside of a ring,
and for scenarios like that, this feature is awesome and priceless.
Moving on to the next feature, the 13 Pro now lets you manually adjust the display brightness
up to 1000 nits instead of last year’s 800, which has been very convenient for me in
situations where I want the display as bright as possible since I don’t like using auto-brightness.
This year’s iPhones also came with the A15 Bionic chip,
with the Pro models getting the faster 5-core GPU, and while I haven’t really
noticed a difference in snappiness directly from the performance improvement alone,
I’ve been testing out some games and I’ve been really impressive by the performance.
Like for example, getting a solid 120FPS
in games like League of Legends wild rift with no hiccups at all.
And for other games that are limited to 60hz, I discovered that you can enable Low
Power Mode and still get perfect 60FPS while saving an impressive amount of battery life
compared to not having it on, making it the perfect mode for gaming,
and it’s only possible because of the high amount of raw horsepower with the A15 chip.
And with that said, let’s finally get into the main camera which was upgraded
with a better sensor and an F1.5 aperture lens to let in quite a bit more light.
And because of this, the level of noise visible in photos is very low,
especially in dimmer situations, so it’s so much better than before.
And in terms of daylight shots, I’ve need been so happy with photos coming off of an iPhone,
with them all being super sharp!
And in terms of portrait mode using the main lens, everything looks absolutely amazing especially the
gradually depth range as something gets further away, and I’ve noticed that the camera can capture
so much color data like the natural sunset hour glow, with incredibly realistic bokeh.
And even at night, the night mode portraits have been refined compared to last year,
and they turn out amazing!
And by far the biggest difference at night is that the 13 Pro Max can perfectly reproduce
the natural glow and colors from neon lights, which no other phone can do right.
So yeh, the camera performance including the hardware and software has never been better,
and I wouldn’t choose any other phone’s camera over this.
But an even bigger deal that really mattered to me
this year is the fact that the ultrawide camera has been upgraded with an F1.8
aperture lens compared to F2.4 last year, so it lets in a TON of light!
And this led to a massive difference in quality,
making it actually usable now for lower light situations, and much more details
for video recording. So because of all of this, I am using the ultrawide lens
much more often now compared to last year with the 12 Pro Max, so I’m very happy about it now.
And even better, the new upgraded 3x optical zoom lens is SO MUCH better than last year’s 2.5x lens
on the 12 Pro Max which suffered from lots of issues with noise,
so for the same reasons, I hardly ever used the telephoto lens last year.
But now, it looks very good and deals with low light much better.
And on top of that, the new 77mm focal length is perfect for portrait photos,
making them look closer to professional portraits than ever before.
And I’ve gotta say that portrait mode with this lens looks amazing,
with Apple finally tuning it perfectly while giving the background
a very natural blur including bokeh that looks better than I’ve ever seen before.
So overall, I’ve never been more happy with the camera performance,
and when it comes to 4K video across any of these lenses, It’s literally the best in the business.
Moving on, we have the speaker quality upgrade, with the speakers having noticeably more volume
than last year which is very important to me since I like to turn on YouTube
videos while in the shower, and I no longer have any issues with hearing what was said.
But on the other hand, the quality has received a huge improvement as well, with sharper highs
and better dynamic range between all of the frequencies, and this is really important to me
since there are many cases where I simply use the built-in speakers instead of going for my AirPods.
And now finishing off with the last 3
major features that matter the most to me after 4 months, we have much-improved heat management.
With the iPhone 12 Pro Max, the display would dim in various situations like just being on the
MagSafe wireless charger, just being out in the sun while using apps, and especially while gaming.
But this year, I’ve only witnessed the display dim a couple of times during the past 4 months
compared to literally a daily basis with the 12 Pro Max which was extremely annoying.
And even if the display dims,
it usually only goes down to around 80% of the maximum brightness compared to 40% which was
insanely dark, so I’m very happy that Apple was able to fix this issue with the 13 Pro Max.
Now for the 2nd most important feature, we have the battery life,
which has been absolutely incredible and even mind-blowing at times.
For the first time ever, I no longer have to even think about my battery life because
it’s just so good and it can literally last a day and a half with regular use,
which never happened before with any previous iPhone.
And this matters to me so much better it just gives you a sense of freedom,
knowing that you can play some games at any time without worrying about the battery life at all.
In fact, I completely stopped charging my 13 Pro Max at night, which used to be something
I had to do no matter what with previous iPhones to make sure it would last through the next day.
Nowadays, it mostly just stays topped up by using my car’s MagSafe
vent mount charger while driving and using my convenient MagSafe stand at work,
with me only really having to resort to wired cable charging on the weekends.
And this level of battery life is surprising coming from my 12 Pro Max since that had decent
battery life. So I couldn’t imagine how it would feel coming from an older or smaller iPhone.
And now finally, we have the #1 new feature that matters to me the most, and that’s
unsurprisingly the 120hz ProMotion refresh rate feature, which is exclusive to the Pro models.
For many years, the chips have gotten more and more powerful, but you’d never notice that big
of a difference in terms of snappiness because the refresh rate was always stuck at 60hz.
But now, this 13 Pro Max feels more snappy and smooth than any iPhone I’ve ever had,
solely because of 120hz ProMotion, especially for scrolling through content like Twitter.
And the reason I know it matters so much is because when someone asks for my help
with some settings or feature on their older 60hz iPhone, the display looks so stuttery and choppy
that for a slight moment, I think it’s broken or has some kind of issue,
before I remember that it’s actually a 60hz display compared to 120 on my 13 Pro Max.
And this has also been very nice for things like gaming
at perfect 120FPS in games like League of Legends, making everything incredibly smooth.
But my favorite thing of all is Apple’s implementation of 120hz using ProMotion
which automatically tunes the refresh rate down on the fly to save battery life, and while it’s not
perfect all the time, it’s definitely worth it, and it’s my absolute favorite feature.
So there you guys go, hopefully, you enjoyed my 4-month review,
and if you did, go ahead and comment your thoughts down below and click that circle above
to subscribe for more videos like this one. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next video!