iPhone 16 Pro Max vs iPhone 16 Plus: The gap grows bigger

So, the iPhone 16 is finally here, Apple lifted the curtain before its latest and greatest iPhone series on September 9. The lineup will again consist of four devices, and two of them occupy the niche of big-screen smartphones. One is an ultra-premium flagship; the other is a very good all rounder and a bang for your buck.

Yes, we're talking about the iPhone 16 Pro Max and the iPhone 16 Plus. Today we're going to explore how these two stack against each other, and even though we still have to run some tests to arrive to a final verdict, we have plenty of info to share with you. Here's our iPhone 16 Pro Max vs iPhone 16 Plus comparison!

When it comes to design, there's a difference in size for the first time since the iPhone Plus made its comeback a couple of years ago. The iPhone 16 Pro Max features a huge 6.9-inch screen, which means it's a larger phone, despite the thinnest bezels on an iPhone ever.

The iPhone 16 Plus, on the other hand, keeps the 6.7-inch form factor from its predecessor, and it's slightly more compact compared to its bigger brother. Here are the exact measurements: the iPhone 16 Pro Max measures 163mm in height and 77.6mm in width and 8.25mm in depth, versus 160.9 x 77.8 x 7.8 for the iPhone 16 Plus.

The materials are also different, just like with the previous generation. The iPhone 16 Pro Max uses the same Grade 5 titanium frame, while the iPhone 16 Plus comes with good old aluminum all around. Both phones feature the latest generation of Apple's proprietary Ceramic Shield hardened glass to protect the displays underneath, and Apple says it's twice as strong as the one found on previous models.

Last year, the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max brought the Action button to the scene, retiring the mute switch for the Pro models. This year, the Action button is coming to the whole lineup, but there's another change - a capacitive camera button called the Camera Control.

This button resides on the right side and allows users to zoom in and out by sliding their finger on it and also quickly take pictures by tapping on it. The good news is that both the iPhone 16 Pro Max and the iPhone 16 Plus come equipped with this new Camera Control button.

The design of the camera bump has changed on the iPhone 16 Plus model, we now have the dual camera system vertically positioned, and the change is required for the non-Pro models to be able to record spatial video. This give the non-Pro models a distinct look, and some character.

Finally, the color situation is also different. Below, you can find the color schemes for both models.

iPhone 16 Pro Max available colors:

• Desert titanium
• Natural titanium
• White titanium
• Black titanium

iPhone 16 Plus available colors:

• Ultramarine
• Teal
• Pink
• White
• Black

One of the biggest changes, compared to last year's lineup, can be found in the display department. The iPhone 16 Pro Max sports a huge 6.9-inch OLED XDR display, and Apple has also shrunk the bezels with a new display technology called Border Reduction Structure (BRS). This panel also features Apple's ProMotion, which is a fancy name for the 1-120Hz dynamic refresh rate we're all familiar with.

The iPhone 16 Plus, on the other hand, was spared the high refresh rate change for a third year in a row. The phone borrows the screen from its predecessor, the iPhone 15 Plus, meaning it comes with a 6.7-inch screen and no variable refresh rate, just a fixed 60Hz, which is a shame, really. 

Display Measurements:

According to Apple, the brightness has been bumped up, and now the Plus model is just as bright as the Pro Max at 2000 nits peak, and it can also go down to 1 nit in dark environments. Our display tests corroborated this, and both phones sport displays with near identical minimum and maximum brightness, as well as color accuracy and temperature. The Dynamic Island cutout is found on both phones, as well as the biometric Face ID system. No changes here, but you know what people say: don't fix it if it ain't broken.

The iPhone 16 series officially debuts the new A18 Pro silicon, which brings a significant leap in performance compared to its predecessor. Apple cites 15% better CPU performance compared to the A17 Pro, and 20% better GPU performance.

The new A18 chipset is manufactured using 3nm technology, just like with the A17, but thanks to TSMC's second-gen 3nm manufacturing process, dubbed N3E, the efficiency is 20% better, and there's also a new redesigned cooling system that offers 20% more heat dissipation and sustained performance under load. 

The thing is, the iPhone 16 Plus comes with its own new silicon onboard, a non-Pro version of the same A18 chipset, built on the same 3nm node and offering similar performance bump. Looking at the benchmarks below, the segregation between the Pro and non-Pro silicon is not that big this year. The gap between the iPhone 16 Plus and the Pro Max model has shrunk even more.

Performance Benchmarks:

The RAM and memory situation is different, but we wouldn't pay too much attention to hard numbers, as even 6GB of RAM has proven to be enough for almost all tasks you can throw at an iPhone's direction. Oh, and by the way, all new iPhone 16 series devices support the latest Wi-Fi 7 standard, so your wireless internet has the potential to be super fast on those. Lear more about Wi-Fi 7 here.

Now, when it comes to software, AI is all the rage nowadays. Apple announced some really cool new features during WWDC'24 and they will be coming on the iPhone 16 series later this year with iOS 18, and one of them is Apple Intelligence. This hijacked term integrates with Photos, offering editing tools directly within the app. Users can now lock apps with Face ID for enhanced privacy, and hide them in a separate folder.

Home screen customization gets a boost with new dark mode options for app icons and widgets, along with the ability to resize them for a more personalized layout, a long-awaited feature that's been available on Android for some time.

Beyond aesthetics, iOS 18 introduces functional improvements like RCS messaging support for better communication with Android devices, and an updated Control Center for easier access to frequently used controls, and let's not forget Messaging via satellite. 

UPDATE: With iOS 18.1, Apple Intelligence has landed on the iPhone 16, bringing some cool (and long awaited) features like AI notification summaries, upgraded writing tools, and a Clean Up option for Photos. In December, iOS 18.2 ChatGPT, we got ChatGPT integration, Visual Intelligence, Image Playground, Genmoji, and the Image Wand. And if you want a smarter Siri, you will have to wait a couple of months until March 2025 when iOS 18.3 will bring a complete Siri overhaul.

Apple introduced a new 48MP ultrawide camera on the iPhone 16 series. The good news is that it comes with a 1/2.6" sensor and a pixel size of 0.7um (of 1.4 when used in quad pixel-binning mode), which is a substantial upgrade over the old 12MP ultrawide Apple has been using for many generations.

The bad news is that only the Pro models got it. The iPhone 16 Plus uses the old 12MP ultrawide, the same found on its predecessor only with a faster f/2.2 aperture in comparison to the f/2.4 on the previous model. The main camera on the iPhone 16 Plus has been carried over from its predecessor as well, it's the same 48MP, f/1.6 aperture camera with optical quality 2X telephoto but Apple now calls it Fusion camera.

Speaking of telephoto, another big difference is the lack of a dedicated telephoto camera on the iPhone 16 Plus, this phone is able to do 2x crops (12MP) from the main 48MP sensor and that's it. The Pro Max comes with the same 5x optical zoom tetraprism lens, offering an equivalent 120mm focal length.

As far as video recording is concerned, the Pro Max is able to record 4K video at 120 frames per second with Dolby Vision (high-quality slow motion), while the non-Pro models, iPhone 16 Plus included, gets only 1080P at either 120FPS or 240FPS or 4K at 60FPS.

Another good news here is that the new Camera Control button Apple introduced during the Apple “It’s Glowtime” event can be found on both of these models. This pressure sensitive button acts as a shutter, but you can also use gestures such as swipe (it's capacitive) to control different settings inside the camera app, such as zoom, exposure, etc.

Obviously, the iPhone 16 Pro Max has a huge advantage here, in terms of new sensors, and some new camera features backed by Apple Intelligence as well.

Now, there are different sensors under the main camera lenses of these two, even though one might mistake them for having the same main camera. The sensor of the Pro Max model is larger with larger pixels. The lenses also have different apertures and the focal length equivalent is different. In the end, though, the difference in quality is not that big, both look nearly identical with good level of detail, dynamic range and exposure.

Photos are taken at 5X zoom level, which automatically means that the iPhone 16 Pro Max has a huge advantage thanks to its dedicated tetraprism telephoto camera (which has a native zoom of 5x). And unsurprisingly, the sample from the Pro Max looks much better, with more detail, sharper and clearer. If you snap a lot of zoomed frames and use the telephoto a lot, the Pro Max is the better choice here.

The ultrawide on the Pro Max is new (and different to the Plus model). 48MP versus 12MP in the end doesn't make such a huge difference in quality, both images look very similar, especially after the JPG compression has kicked in. For normal users (who don't overuse the ultrawide anyway) this probably won't make a big difference and both phones will get the job done on the ultrawide playground.

Haptics have always been a strong side of iPhone devices, and this remains a fact on the new iPhone 16 lineup. The Taptic engine has proven itself over the past few generations as a strong and tight vibration source, so this shouldn't be a consideration when choosing between these two.

There's a new studio-grade four microphone system, and both phones can record spatial audio, but we have to test them back to back to come with a final verdict in this section. Finally, there is no 3.5mm jack onboard either of these phones, but this comes as nobody's surprise (the 3.5mm isn't coming back to the iPhone, guys).

The battery capacities for the iPhone 16 Plus and the iPhone 16 Pro Max weren't disclosed during the “It’s Glowtime” event (which is normal, we got the exact capacities after the first teardowns a few days later). The iPhone 16 Plus comes with a 4,674 mAh battery (6.6% more compared to the previous model), and the Pro Max sports a 4,685 mAh cell, up 5.5% compared to the last generation.

Battery Life Comparison:

Strangely enough, there's a huge difference in actual battery life, despite the almost identical battery capacity. The iPhone 16 Pro Max outperformed the Plus model with more than four hours when it comes to web browsing (probably thanks to the ProMotion screen and the variable refresh rate), and it also won the gaming battle with one and a half hours advantage. The video streaming score turned out identical, which is expected, as YouTube runs at 60Hz.

As far as charging goes, sadly there's no news to be reported. Both phones come with the same 26W wired charging speed through the USB-C connector. And needless to say, there's no charger in the box, just a USB-C cable. There are some rumors that the new iPhone 16 series supports faster charging in some scenarios, namely when you use a power-intensive app during charging, and we were able to confirm this in our lab. The speed jumps to around 38W when using the phone while charging, and it's very interesting why Apple decided to cap the phone to 26W and not offer the faster charging at all times.

Here's a quick overview of the specs of both phones. You can check out our full iPhone 16 Pro Max vs iPhone 16 Plus comparison just following the link.

So, which one should you buy? Unlike other comparisons, the answer here is straight-forward. If you want the best tech and don't mind the price tag, go for the iPhone 16 Pro Max. It comes with a huge ProMotion screen, the latest Apple silicon, upgrades in the camera department, and a bigger battery.

If you're looking for a more budget-friendly option that still features a big display and the longevity and seamless connectivity of the Apple ecosystem, the iPhone 16 Plus could be a better choice, and the $300 in savings could justify the lack of a ProMotion screen and a telephoto camera.