Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max review: Ludicrous Speed — Go
Apple's biggest phone ever is also its most powerful, but is it worth buying?
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Pros
- So much power
- Battery life just keeps going
- The camera takes fantastic shots
Cons
- It's too big for one-handed use
- The camera shutter button isn't as good as it could be
- It's not cheap
It sounds like the setup for a dirty joke, but how big is too big? This is the question I found myself asking while testing the iPhone 16 Pro Max over the past month.
The iPhone 16 Pro Max is the biggest iPhone ever. It’s about 3 mm taller than last year’s 15 Pro Max and almost 1 mm wider, but manages to increase the screen size to a whopping 6.9 inches thanks to these minor dimension shifts and a smaller bezel around the display.
Combined with the incredible performance from the A18 Pro chip inside, and the iPhone 16 Pro Max feels like Apple has pushed the iPhone to Ludicrous Speed.
It outperforms last year’s Pro model significantly on GeekBench 6 benchmark scores, feels faster and yet… doesn’t do all that much different.
That’s because Apple has released the phone before its flagship software feature — Apple Intelligence – is ready for prime time.
While I’m skeptical that many of the Apple Intelligence features will actually be useful regularly, the result of the hardware being ready for software that hasn’t launched yet makes the phone feel ridiculously overpowered.
Combined with the Pro Max’s massive price tag, and there’s an argument that this year, the core iPhone 16 model may be the better balanced smartphone.
