iPhone 16 Pro Max vs iPhone 14 Pro Max: Is it time to upgrade?
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Intro
The new iPhone 16 Pro Max is here, and the iPhone 14 Pro Max is now two generations old. Ouch!
With the new jumbo-sized iPhone, we get a larger display with thinner bezels, a new button (the Camera Control button), better performance thanks to the A18 Pro chipset, improved battery life, and improved cameras.
Might not seem like such a big upgrade cycle to some, but then again, new iPhones these days are aimed at people using three- or four-year old devices, so all the improvements are on point.
However, the iPhone 14 Pro Max still feels sufficiently modern. With its Dynamic Island punch-hole, large 48MP main camera, and classic flat design, it's still a device that will be serving flawlessly for years to come. Sure, it might not be the newest one around, but a case could be made that you probably shouldn't upgrade to the iPhone 16 Pro Max if you're content with your iPhone 14 Pro Max.
iPhone 16 Pro Max vs iPhone 14 Pro Max differences:
| iPhone 16 Pro Max | iPhone 14 Pro Max |
|---|---|
| 6.9-inch OLED display with 2000 nits of max brightness | 6.7-inch OLED display with regular brightness (1600 nits max in HDR mode) |
| Latest-gen Ceramic Shield | Older-gen Ceramic Shield |
| 227gr weight | 240gr weight |
| Titanium body with extremely thin bezels (1.15mm) | Stainless-steel body with matte glass backplate and regular bezels |
| Triple camera: 48MP main camera, 48MP ultra-wide, 12MP telephoto w/ 5X optical zoom | A 48MP main camera, 12MP ultra-wide, 12MP telephoto w/ 3X optical zoom |
| New Photographic Styles | The standard Photographic Styles |
| Customizable Action button and Camera Control button | Standard ring switch |
| 1-nit minimum brightness | Minimum brightness not as impressive |
| USB Type-C port at the bottom | The last iPhone to feature a Lightning port |
| Apple Intelligence support with iOS 18.1 | No Apple Intelligence support with iOS 18.1 |
| Visual Intelligence support with Camera Control | No Visual Intelligence |
| Second-gen 3nm chip (Apple A18 Pro), with 8GB RAM | 4nm Apple A16 Bionic chip, with 6GB RAM |
| Three or four storage tiers: 256GB, 512GB, 1TB | Four storage tiers: 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB |
| Better battery life (33 hours of video playback) | Smaller battery (4,323mAh) and worse battery life (29 hours of video playback) |
| 25W MagSafe wireless charging | 15W MagSafe wireless charging |
| Wi-Fi 7 and Snapdragon X75 5G modem, delivering higher data speeds | Wi-Fi 6, Snapdragon X65 5G, lower data throughput speeds |
Table of Contents:
Read more:
- iPhone 16 Pro Max review: bigger screen, bigger opportunities
- iPhone 15 Pro Max review: scope the difference
- iOS 18: Release date, features, and compatible iPhones
- iPhone 16 Plus vs iPhone 14 Plus: Is it time to upgrade?
- The best iPhone to buy: our verdict
Design and Size
Some notable differences
Much has changed, but the looks of the iPhone Pro Max lineup have remained consistent (Image by PhoneArena)
The iPhone 16 Pro Max doubles down on the titanium design that debuted with the iPhone 15 Pro Max last year. It remains slightly curved for improved ergonomics, but the most important aspect of the design here could be the thinnest bezels on an iPhone––just 1.15mm!
Oh, did we say the most significant aspect are the bezels? Apologies, the iPhone 16 Pro Max has a much larger 6.9-inch screen. This was achieved thanks to the combination of thinner bezels and slightly taller body. At the same time, the Dynamic Island combining the FaceTime camera and Face ID sensors is here to stay, and so is the customizable Action Button that broke ground in 2023.
Aside from the Action Button, the iPhone 16 Pro Max debuts another new button, dubbed the Camera Control button. It's a capacitive button with sapphire coating that's mostly similar to the Touch ID home button on the iPhone 8––delivering haptic feedback and being pressure-sensitive without employing any moving parts. With this button, you get a whole new way of controlling your camera.
After using it for a while, it's clear that it's probably far from Apple's best idea ever. If you have larger hands like me, the Camera Control button will always be in that weird uncomfortable spot in both portrait and landscape orientation.
This way, using it doesn't feel natural at all, but the polar opposite: you have to go out of your comfort zone in order to use the Camera Control button as Apple intended. Not a very ergonomic decision.
Stainless steel and titanium heavyweights (Image by PhoneArena)
At the same time, the iPhone 14 Pro Max acts as the proverbial bridge between the old and the new Apple design language. It comes with a flat stainless-steel frame and employs both the Dynamic Island and a ring switch. A peculiar mix of classic and new features here. Oh, and there's a Lightning port at the bottom of the iPhone 14 Pro Max, while the iPhone 16 Pro Max has a USB Type-C port.
Size-wise, the iPhone 16 Pro Max is slightly taller and thicker, but lighter than the iPhone 14 Pro Max, which is great to witness. This is significant, as the iPhone 16 Pro Max also adopts a larger screen and battery, so a win-win scenario on multiple fronts. Sorry, iPhone 14 Pro Max users, but your phone might feel a little old-fashioned in this regard.
Colors-wise, we got the iPhone 14 Pro Max in Space Black, Silver, Gold, and Deep Purple. The iPhone 16 Pro Max colors are Black Titanium, White Titanium, Natural Titanium, and Desert Titanium.
Display Differences
The iPhone 16 Pro Max has the biggest display on an iPhone (Image by PhoneArena)
So, aside from the size, will there be any major changes in the display department? Well, no.
The size bump to 6.9 inches is pretty important, as iPhones rarely get larger screens. Besides this change, the rest of the iPhone display properties have not changed, except for the minimum brightness, which is now a single nit. The Super Retina XDR OLED screen with 120Hz ProMotion that enables super-smooth refresh rate is here to stay.
There's a new Ceramic Shield coating on the iPhone 16 Pro Max that is reportedly twice as resilient as the one on the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
The iPhone 14 Pro Max, on the other hand, comes with a smaller screen in comparison, a 6.7-inch Super Retina XDR OLED one that also support 120Hz ProMotion. The maximum brightness is lower here, "just" 1,600 nits in HDR mode, which was already surpassed by the next-in-line iPhone 15 Pro Max, so it's the iPhone 16 Pro Max will most certainly best them all.
Our in-house benchmarks confirm this: we get similar maximum brightness levels on both phones, but the iPhone 16 Pro Max really gets below a nit of minimum brightness. The color accuracy is great on both phones, but the iPhone 14 Pro Max has a slight upper hand as per our tests. Definitely not something that's easily discernible by the naked eye, but the data definitely points to the older iPhone having a slight upper hand in color accuracy.
And if you're wondering why we've measured a peak brightness of slightly above 1,000 nits, that's because we measure displays at 100% APL (fully lit screen displaying a white image), whereas manufacturers usually measure over a smaller display area. This allows the lit diodes to draw more power and get brighter.
Display Measurements:
Face ID is the biometric method of choice to unlock your iPhone 14 Pro Max or iPhone 16 Pro Max, too. It's fast and reliable, we have no issues with it.
Performance and Software
Focus on AI and raw performance
Checkmate with the 3nm chip (Image by PhoneArena)
Apple's second-generation 3nm chipset, the A18 Pro chip, is found inside the iPhone 16 Pro Max. Aside from beating all former Apple chips in raw performance (that's a given), it also puts the focus on on-device artificial intelligence and machine-learning. The chip consists of dual performance cores and quad efficiency cores, as well as a 16-core NPU for Apple Intelligence on-device processing.
Apple has also improved the internal design of the iPhone 16 Pro Max, achieving 20% improvements in heat management, which on its own minimizes throttling and achieves better performance. Nice!
What's the situation with the iPhone 14 Pro Max? It comes along with a 4nm chipset, the Apple A16 Bionic, which still performs mighty fine in both everyday tasks and benchmarks. Where the Apple A16 Bionic will probably fall off could be on-device AI processing, but cloud-based AI processes that are coming with iOS 18 should be just fine. The A18 Pro inside the iPhone 16 Pro Max will undoubtedly make it way more future-proof for all things AI-related.
As per the in-house synthetic benchmarks that we conducted, the iPhone 16 Pro Max is naturally a better performer in both the CPU-tasking Geekbench 6 tests and the GPU-heavy 3DMark Extreme tests. Still, the iPhone 14 Pro Max definitely packs some serious power to get you through regular and more tasking usage scenarios, despite the loss in the synthetic tests.
We have 8GB of RAM of memory on the iPhone 16 Pro Max. One of the main reasons for this memory windfall is the performance cost and hardware requirements behind the on-device AI as it processes large swaths of data where RAM is paramount. At the same time, the iPhone 14 Pro Max comes with 6GB of RAM, but it also doesn't support Apple Intelligence.
Just like the iPhone 15 Pro Max, the iPhone 16 Pro Max comes with 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB of native storage. You can get the iPhone 14 Pro Max with 128GB in the entry-level variation, but also comes with 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB of storage.
Just like the iPhone 15 Pro Max, the iPhone 16 Pro Max comes with 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB of native storage. You can get the iPhone 14 Pro Max with 128GB in the entry-level variation, but also comes with 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB of storage.
The iPhone 16 Pro Max comes with support for Wi-Fi 7 and the Snapdragon X75 5G modem for faster data speeds. The iPhone 14 Pro Max, on the other hand, has Wi-Fi 6 and the older Snapdragon X65 5G chip.
As far as software support goes, Apple has recently revealed that it has committed to a MINIMUM of five years of software updates. Thus, the iPhone 16 Pro Max will receive timely updates at least until 2029 when iOS 23 should break ground. The same applies to the iPhone 14 Pro Max, which will be supported until 2028 at least, or even longer.
As far as software support goes, Apple has recently revealed that it has committed to a MINIMUM of five years of software updates. Thus, the iPhone 16 Pro Max will receive timely updates at least until 2029 when iOS 23 should break ground. The same applies to the iPhone 14 Pro Max, which will be supported until 2028 at least, or even longer.
The iPhone 16 Pro Max ships with iOS 18, and the iPhone 14 Pro Max also supports the latest software update. iOS 18.1 will bring Apple Intelligence to the iPhone 16 Pro Max, but not the iPhone 14 Pro Max.
iOS 18.1
Currently out, here's what iOS 18.1 is bringing to the iPhone 16 Pro Max, but not the iPhone 14 Pro Max:
- Writing Tools––Enabling you to proofread and rewrite text natively in almost any app. The suggested edits can be applied one by one or all at once. Also lets you summarize given text in a table or bullet points, make a list, and so on. Probably one of the most useful new features that will go live with iOS 18.1
- Siri––The smarter Siri is coming in early 2025, but the current version is getting a new look. When Siri is turned on, it displays a glowing overlay around the screen, which is cool. Using Siri on iOS 18.1 lets you type commands instead of talking. The assistant will understand your questions better and can follow along if you change them mid-sentence.
- Mail––The default email app will let you summarize emails and issue quick-tap responses thanks to a feature dubbed Smart Reply. You'll be notified of an email that's high-priority by Apple Intelligence.
- Messages––The Smart Reply feature arrives in Messages as well, allowing you to quickly send adequate responses.
- Photos––Apart from a major redesign, the stock photo app also gets some AI features, namely Memory Movies. Apple Intelligence can sort through your photo collection by typing in a prompt and make a movie out of it. You can also remove unwanted elements from your photos with the Clean Up tool in the Photos app, which is nice.
- Visual Intelligence––Another new feature intertwined with the camera and the new Camera Control button is Visual intelligence (not out yet), which allows you to point your phone at a point of interest or a business venue, click the Camera Control button, and receive relevant information about that.
- Focus Modes––A new Reduce Interruptions focus mode will rely on Apple Intelligence to only notify you of important notifications.
- Notifications––You will be presented with an AI summary of your notifications on the lock screen.
- Phone––iOS 18.1 will let you record phone calls and automatically transcribe them straight to the Notes app.
- Safari––The stock browser gets a summarize feature as well.
iOS 18.2
- Image Playground––You can make custom images based on text description.
- Genmoji––Using a text prompt, you can create your own emojis.
- ChatGPT integration in Siri––Apple's smart assistant can now tap into ChatGPT's powers when you ask it to, giving you the full array of AI capabilities of the most popular AI chatbot out there (you can also log with your own account information)
- New Writing Tools––The Writing Tools feature has been enhanced with the addition of two additional Writing Tools options, namely "Compose" and "Describe your change."
- Visual Intelligence for iPhone 16 users––With the new Camera Control button, iPhone 16 users can now take a picture and search the web for information about what they've captured.
- Image Wand––This new tool lets you turn simple drawings into complete pictures.
- Mail––The stock Mail app now has categories, which sort your mail and keep it well organized.
iOS 18.3
A few days before iOS 18.2 gets released, it is possible that iOS 18.3 will arrive as a developer beta. We expect this one to finally bring the overhauled Siri assistant, which will be able to execute multi-step actions within your apps.
For example, you will be able to tell the assistant to go through your photo library, find all pictures of a blue balloon and send them to a specific contact without requiring an action from you.
Camera
Triple cameras, but very different
The slow evolution of the iPhone camera (Image by PhoneArena)
The iPhone 16 Pro Max inherits the same triple camera setup as the iPhone 15 Pro Max but with some notable changes: the 48MP Fusion main camera has a custom new sensor, the same tetraprism telephoto camera with 5X optical zoom, and finally, the ultra-wide camera is now a 48MP one. The latter will possibly deliver better light sensitivity and improved detail.
The iPhone 16 Pro Max also employs improved Photographic Styles, which are now more customizable than before and let you fine-tune the native appearance of the photos you get.
The iPhone 14 Pro Max, on the other hand, debuted Apple's 48MP main camera, which has been used on the iPhone 15 Pro Max and will likely be used on many more iPhones in the near future. The rest of the camera loadout is a bit more old-school, though: a 12MP ultra-wide and a 12MP telephoto with 3X optical zoom are not that impressive. Yet, they definitely get the job done.
The iPhone 16 Pro Max also scores 4K@120fps video recording, which enables cinematic video capture, a first on the iPhone line. Additionally, Apple has outfitted the iPhone 16 Pro Max with a four-array studio-grade mic, which will deliver better audio quality, native wind noise reduction, and a new Audio Mix feature, which allows you to intelligently isolate sound and voice from your video clips.
In the PhoneArena Camera Test, the iPhone 16 Pro Max easily passes its predecessor in both the photo and video tests. The difference is bigger in the video test and lesser in the photo one, but overall, the iPhone 16 Pro Max emerges victorious.
PhoneArena Camera Score:
Let's break down the differences below.
Main Camera
The iPhone 14 Pro Max is a phone that comes off as a pretty decent camera performer even in 2024, as evident by the camera samples that compare it to the much newer iPhone 16 Pro Max. There are just minimal differences between the two devices, which can be mostly traced back to the slight differences in framing. We get similar dynamics and sharpness with both 48MP cameras.
At low light, there are slight but important differences. The iPhone 16 Pro Max gives us significantly better sharpness (check out the detail of the brick wall). There's also better dynamics, as evident in the neon sign, which is more true-to-life and vivid in the iPhone 16 Pro Max photo.
Zoom Quality
At 5X, which is the iPhone 16 Pro Max's native zoom, we get extremely decent photos, with lots of detail and perfect dynamics. Interestingly, the iPhone 14 Pro Max doesn't really lag so much behind––despite it having to rely on digital zoom to capture an equal 5X scene, we get a rather decent photo sample. Sure, the details are not as good as the iPhone 15 Pro Max, slightly smudged as we're past the optical capabilities of the iPhone 14 Pro Max's 3X telephoto camera.
At 10X, there's no competition––the iPhone 16 Pro Max does a much better job at preserving the natural look of details. The iPhone 14 Pro Max has a bleaker and more washed out color palette, as well as smudged details and subpar sharpness.
Ultra-wide Camera
Thanks to the upgrade to 48MP, the ultra-wide camera on the iPhone 16 Pro Max is better at resolving detail, making it appear way more natural. Meanwhile, the iPhone 14 Pro Max has some noticeable oversharpening.
At lower light, there aren't any notable differences. The iPhone 16 Pro Max has delivered a slightly more colorful sunset, but that's a pretty minor difference between the two generations.
Selfies
Selfies are great on the iPhone 16 Pro Max, with lovely skin tones and great dynamics, not to mention the correct level of detail (not too much and not too little). Those selfies are taken with the default camera settings, and with the iPhone 16 Pro Max you can fine tune skin tones to a much greater degree, so you're truly in control as to how your photos turn out; this applies to selfies as well.
More Camera Samples
Battery Life and Charging
All hail the new iPhone battery king
The iPhone 16 Pro Max delivers significantly better battery life (Image by PhoneArena)
The aging iPhone 14 Pro Max packs a 4,323mAh battery, which is smaller than both the preceding iPhone 13 Pro Max and succeeding iPhone 15 Pro Max. As a result, it's not a phone that you'd usually associate with great battery life. Still, it easily lasts you through a day or more.
Meanwhile, the fresh new iPhone 16 Pro Max comes with the largest battery ever fitted on an iPhone, a massive 4,685mAh unit. When we hear of such major battery milestones, we are always hopeful that they will translate to palpably better battery life, and that's precisely what we get here.
In the PhoneArena custom battery tests, the iPhone 16 Pro Max definitely delivers. It beats the iPhone 14 Pro Max in the custom browsing test, which aims to emulate a regular browsing workflow, by nearly four hours. Interestingly, the iPhone 14 Pro Max scores one back in our custom video test, in which it lasts some half an hour extra. In the gaming test, the iPhone 16 Pro Max lasts a couple of hours more, which is great to see.
PhoneArena Battery and Charging Test Results:
A big difference between the two is the port at the bottom: the iPhone 16 Pro Max comes with a USB Type-C port, while the iPhone 14 Pro Max employs a Lightning port.
Charging-wise, Apple doesn't really give too much information about the potential wired charging speed it might have thrown on board its new iPhone 16 Pro Max. We measured 26W of wired charging under normal circumstances, but interestingly, if you fire up a game or open another tasking app, the charging speed jumps to intriguing levels (for an iPhone). We measured around 40W of charging speeds in this way, which Apple doesn't really mention anywhere.
Still, it takes the iPhone 16 Pro Max an hour and 42 minutes for a full charge, which is some four minutes slower than the iPhone 14 Pro Max. At the end of the day, that's what matters.
Charging-wise, we get an update to the wireless charging speed of the iPhone 16 Pro Max, which is now 25W. The phone also supports Qi2. No official upgrade to the wired charging speed, although the iPhone 16 Pro Max ramps up the power draw from the outlet when you're charging and using an intensive app at the same time. This ensures that you will always get the same charging times, no matter if you're using your device or not.
Audio Quality and Haptics
iPhones have always had great audio quality out of their stereo loudspeakers, and these two don't disappoint. The iPhone 16 Pro Max delivers slightly louder and crisper sound, but we're nearly two generations down the line, so such small quality-of-life changes are to be expected.
One new feature that has made its way into the iPhone 16 Pro Max are its improved quad mics, which enables native wind noise reduction during phone calls. The new mics also allow for much more leeway when it comes to audio mixing in post, allowing to choose different audio streams for your video clip.
Haptics are great on both devices as vibration feedback has always been a strength of the iPhone line.
Specs Comparison
Our iPhone 16 Pro Max vs iPhone 14 Pro Max specs comparison is already live, but we've also summarized the essentials for you right below:
| iPhone 16 Pro Max | iPhone 14 Pro Max | |
|---|---|---|
| Size, weight | 163.0 x 77.58 x 8.26 mm, 227gr | 160.7 x 77.6 x 7.85 mm, 240gr |
| Screen | 6.9" OLED 120Hz ProMotion Dynamic Island | 6.7" OLED 120Hz ProMotion Dynamic Island |
| Processor | A18 Pro 3nm | A16 Bionic 4nm |
| RAM, Storage | 8GB/256GB 8GB/512GB 8GB/1TB | 6GB/128GB 6GB/256GB 6GB/512GB 6GB/1TB |
| Cameras | 48MP main 48MP ultra 12MP 5X zoom LiDAR scanner 12MP front | 48MP main 12MP ultra 12MP 3X zoom LiDAR scanner 12MP front |
| Battery | 4,685mAh | 4,323mAh |
| Charging | USB-C 25W wired 25W MagSafe | Lightning 25W wired 15W MagSafe |
- You can also use PhoneArena's comparison tool to compare iPhones
Summary
It's okay to upgrade but don't
So, with all that in mind, should you upgrade? Has the time come to ditch the iPhone 14 Pro Max?
Let's be honest, it wasn't one of the finest iPhones in recent years, but is the iPhone 16 Pro Max the one you should get instead?
Well, we can't say yet, as the iPhone 16 Pro Max is yet to go through the paces of our own in-house tests. It's a bit early to draw conclusions.
From the looks of it, the iPhone 14 Pro Max users might not have that many reasons to upgrade. From a pure value perspective, the iPhone 14 Pro Max is still a perfectly viable device that's extremely unlikely to be that outshone by its grandson, so to speak.
At the same time, if you're into cutting-edge tech, there's nothing stopping you from upgrading to the iPhone 16 Pro Max. It will have a ton of niceties and improvements over the previous generation, even more so in comparison with the iPhone 14 Pro Max.
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