Apple iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max Review

Apple says this is the biggest-ever camera upgrade on an iPhone. It’s true.

by David Phelan
MSRP: £1,049.00
9
AVForumsSCORE
OUT OF
10

Apple iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max Review

The new iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max have designs that are very gently updated from last year but have significant changes inside, including, for the first time on an iPhone, a 120Hz refresh rate screen. There are also tremendous new cameras armed with cool new features including strong video upgrades. The iPhones are fast performers and battery life, helpfully, has gone up considerably.

The Good

  • Brilliant cameras
  • Great 120Hz display
  • Super-fast performance
  • Outstanding battery life

The Bad

  • Design hasn’t changed enough
  • Some features coming later

What are the Apple iPhone 13 Pro and Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max?

These are two of the four new iPhones just released by Apple – the first time the company has put four new phones on sale on the same day. The other two are the iPhone 13 and the smaller handset, the iPhone 13 mini.

The Apple A15 Bionic processor powers all four of the phones but the iPhone 13 Pro and the larger iPhone 13 Pro use an upgraded version of the chip thanks to an extra graphics core. The Pro models have three cameras instead of two, extra photography capabilities and a 120Hz display with adaptive refresh rate.

And all the new iPhones have better battery life than last year’s handsets – which is some of the best news there is.

Unlike last year, when the two Pros in the iPhone 12 range had different cameras, here the two phones are identical except for size, battery size and price. So, with hardly any exceptions, everything that applies to one Pro handset is also true for the other.

Design

Did you see last year’s iPhone 12 range? The same flat-edged design that arrived last year is repeated this time, too. Because the sides were no longer curved, as had been the case with the iPhone 11 Pro, the new design saved space, meaning that bigger screens could be included without increasing the size of the phone itself much. There’s a side benefit too; Apple says the flat edges make the phone more durable than before.

The iPhone 13 Pro has a 6.1in display, the Max has a 6.7in screen, the same as last year. Both have OLED screens with around 458 pixels per inch resolution.

The antenna bands that circle the edge of the phones are gleaming stainless steel, while the back is glass with a matte finish, apart from a glossy background to the camera panel. And the phones come with 5G connectivity and Ceramic Shield, Apple’s name for its super-hard, drop-resistant screen covering (with so much ceramic in the build it’s no longer accurate to call it glass, Apple says).

When it comes to the phone’s back, you’re okay to call that glass and Apple says it’s the toughest on a smartphone. Again, they’re talking about drop resistance more than being scratchproof.

Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max
iPhone 13 Pro Max

There are two big changes to the design. First, the TrueDepth camera that sits at the top of the screen in a cut-out that is sometimes called the notch, is smaller. This is the first time the notch has  changed in size since it was first introduced in 2017 on the iPhone X. It’s still there but about 20 per cent smaller. The notch is a curious thing: before people used it, they thought it was going to dominate everything but found within a few days they quickly ceased to notice it. That’s the same with this smaller notch. When you do see it, you’re pleased that it takes up less space, but most of the time it doesn’t stand out.

Well, there’s one exception to that: you still can’t show the battery percentage on the display. This was something that disappeared when the notch arrived, resulting in the need to swipe down from the top right corner to see the exact figure. Not everybody needs this granular access to battery information, but I like it and it would be better if Apple had found space to reinstate it.

 

On both phones, the snappers are bigger than last year [...] on the smaller iPhone 13 Pro, the change is very striking

Even more noticeable is the camera panel on the back of the phone, especially on the iPhone 13 Pro. On both phones, the snappers are bigger than last year, but while the difference on the Pro Max is there, on the smaller iPhone 13 Pro, the change is very striking. The bigger lenses are because of improved sensors and different focal lengths, as we’ll see shortly.

The latest Pro iPhones come in three colours similar to last year, gold, graphite and silver, plus one that’s all-new: sierra blue, a light, attractive shade that is understated and eye-catching at the same time.

Display

Apple’s first iPhone with an OLED display was the iPhone X. The iPhone 11, released in 2019, still had an LCD screen, with the Pro models exclusively having OLED. Only last year did the entire iPhone 12 range switch to OLED. That’s the case this time as well but the new detail that’s for the Pro phones only is the refresh rate. This is the first iPhone with ProMotion, the adaptive refresh rate introduced on the iPad Pro a while back. It means that if you’re reading a static screen such as an email, the refresh rate drops as low as 10Hz, which saves battery life, but if you’re scrolling through onscreen lists, for instance, or playing a graphically detailed game, the frame rate leaps up towards the maximum of 120Hz to provide a smooth, stutter-free experience. As you scroll, the system adapts to match the speed of your finger.

Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max
iPhone 13 Pro (left), iPhone 13 Pro Max (right)

The entire iPhone 13 range also has brighter screens this year. The iPhone 13 has peak brightness of 800 nits, while the Pro iPhones go to 1,000 nits peak outdoor brightness. There’s another brightness stat: when viewing HDR content such as photos and videos, a 1,200 nits peak brightness kicks in.

In practice, most of this goes unnoticed: occasionally I spotted how bright the screen was and I never thought it was too dim. But Apple manages this immaculately.

 

The entire iPhone 13 range also has brighter screens this year

The iPhone 13 Pro Max screen resolution is 2778 x 1284, that’s 458 ppi. The smaller Pro is 2532 x 1170, which is a higher density by the tiniest amount, working out at 460ppi.

Apple’s True Tone technology is in this display – it’s been on iPhones for a while now – and it’s a subtle but effective system that adjusts onscreen white balance to match ambient colour temperature. It’s designed to make images have excellent colour fidelity.

As mentioned, this is an HDR display and it certainly gleams with the right content on it. It has native support for HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision. I’m still not sure I’d like to watch a whole movie on a phone screen, but it definitely makes compatible TV shows look their best.

Cameras

Apple says this is the biggest-ever camera upgrade on an iPhone. It’s true. But where rival companies have long since moved to exceptionally high pixel counts, often using pixel binning to combine adjacent pixels into bigger ones, Apple has stuck with 12MP sensors. That’s true here, too, for each of the three cameras, wide, ultra wide and telephoto. The main camera has the largest sensor yet on an iPhone with 1.9 μm pixels. Apple says it’s up to twice as good at light gathering.

The ultra wide has a larger aperture than before (f/1.8) and the telephoto is also completely new. Last year, the iPhone 12 Pro had a telephoto equivalent to 2x the wide lens. That year, the 12 Pro Max went further with a 2.5x optical zoom equivalent. Now, both sizes of Pro have a 3x optical zoom equivalent. Of all the changes, this was the one that took me longest to master. It gets you in so close that you frequently need to step back to see everything you want to.

Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max
iPhone 13 Pro/Pro Max Macro Mode

Another big change is the Macro mode that has been introduced. This is excellent, but again it takes some getting used to. You see, there’s no separate Macro setting as there is on many phones. Instead, you simply approach your tiny subject using the wide lens. As you get close, 5cm or less, you can see that the camera automatically switches lenses (to the ultra wide, it turns out) and suddenly, all blurring vanishes and you’re looking at something in phenomenal detail. You can get as close as 2cm and still have precise focus.

 

Apple has stuck with 12MP sensors

But there’s a downside, when you’re shooting Macro video footage, because you don’t necessarily need to see the juddering lens shift in your recording. Apple has said it will update this in the future so you can turn Macro off.

Personally, I didn’t mind it and was happy to film around it or whatever. And the results, especially for stills photography, are terrific, and it’s fun to do. Macro is exclusive to the Pro iPhones and is one of my favourite updates. In some ways it works as a though it is a fourth lens on the iPhone.

Then there’s Photographic Styles, something that’s available on the non-Pro models, too. On launching the camera for the first time, you’re asked to choose between five styles: Standard, Rich Contrast, Vibrant, Warm and Cool. You’ll see examples of how the output changes according to the style. Unlike some parts of the iPhone’s photography, you can’t change it afterwards, but you can change your style whenever you like. Once you’ve plumped for one of them, you see the style live, that is, on the iPhone display as you shoot. It’s sort of like a filter but way more sophisticated.

Apple has also improved Night mode this time around, using a different set-up to take and combine multiple long-exposure shots. As before, though, the purpose is the same: to create a visible shot that doesn’t look like artificial brightening, but remains true to how the moment felt.

It’s now available on all the cameras, including Telephoto which lacked it before.

Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max
iPhone 13 Pro camera array

HDR in photography is a powerful tool and this camera uses what’s called Smart HDR 4 which is now designed to shoot individuals in a group shot separately, adjusting colour and lighting for each person. Again, it’s to try and make the photo more true-to-life.

And then there’s video. Apple’s iPhone video recording has long been exceptional and it became even more so last year with the addition of Dolby Vision. Next comes ProRes video, Apple’s advanced video codec with remarkable colour fidelity. This is mostly used by professionals, so to have it available in an iPhone is quite something. Two things to note: ProRes is coming later, it’s not available yet. And secondly, because shooting in ProRes takes up so much space, there’s a restriction on how you use it on some models. You can shoot in ProRes at up to 4K resolution at 30 frames per second but only as long as your iPhone has storage of 256GB, 512GB or 1TB. In other words, the lowest-storage iPhone 13 Pro, with 128GB on board, restricts you to recording ProRes in 1080p at 30fps.

There’s one other feature that’s new to the iPhone cameras and it’s the best: Cinematic mode video. Even the most casual of cinephile enjoys the way focus is adjusted to make sure you’re looking in the right place. Some iPhone apps, like the brilliant FiLMiC Pro, let you build in focus shifts smoothly and with great granularity.

 

... suddenly, all blurring vanishes and you’re looking at something in phenomenal detail

Now, Cinematic mode does something similar – but it does everything for you. We live, Apple exec Phil Schiller said a few years back, in a world of computational photography. So, Cinematic mode analyses what’s in a scene and adjusts the depth of field automatically. It’s fast and astonishingly accurate. It knows to look out for eyes, so if someone in the background turns towards the camera, the focus switches to them, switching back smoothly if someone closer up turns to face you. Not only does this work well with people, but if you’re focused on an object and a pet walks into frame, the focus pulls perfectly.

Hold on, you say, supposing that’s not the effect you’re going for thank you very much? Well, not only can you adjust the focal point manually by tapping on the screen, but even better, you can change things afterwards. You can, and this is something the film industry can’t do, edit the focal point to change what’s sharp.

Performance

The iPhone 13 range uses a new processor, the A15 Bionic. Without getting bogged down in technicalities, the chip has a 6-core CPU and 4-core GPU. Well, that’s on the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini. On the Pro models, there’s an extra core in the GPU, to deliver greater graphics performance, optimise the 120Hz display and more.

Apple won’t say how fast the chip is, merely that it’s 50 per cent faster than the competition, which is rather a woolly claim. There are clues: where the A14 Bionic was capable of 11 trillion calculations a second, this new A15 Bionic manages 15.8 trillion. That’s a sure indication that there’s an uptick in capabilities here.

 

... this is an HDR display and it certainly gleams with the right content on it

Anyway, these statistics wouldn’t mean much if performance was sluggish. Of course, it’s not. Launching apps is instantaneous, video streaming is butter-smooth, there is literally no shutter lag on the camera and so on. This is a phone that doesn’t keep you waiting and is highly enjoyable to use as a result. 

Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max
iPhone 13 Pro /Pro Max colour options

Battery

And this is the final bit of good news about the iPhone 13 – the battery just goes on and on. Last year, the diminutive iPhone 12 mini was criticised for running out of energy before the day was out. This year’s mini has an extra 90 minutes of life.

In the world of Pro iPhones, the 13 Pro also has an extra one-and-a-half hours of life and the bigger iPhone 13 Pro Max manages another 2.5 hours between charges. In the case of the Max, this makes it the longest battery life ever for the iPhone, Apple says.

These are significant steps forward and a clear sign that Apple is paying attention to the basics as well as advanced new shiny features.

To have achieved these levels of battery life while still embracing the power drain that 5G can bring is really something.

Conclusion

The latest iPhones look pretty similar to last year’s, but these are not incremental updates. The design is consolidated with a smaller notch but much bigger camera panel: three enormous black circles stare out at you from the iPhone’s back. And it’s what those lenses do that defines the leaps forward this year’s iPhones make. Those bigger lenses hide better, sometimes bigger, sensors and provide genuinely useful additional features, plus an all-round improvement to regular photography.

Performance, photographic and otherwise, is sublimely fast and effective, thanks to the new processor. And the 120Hz screen, a speciality for the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max only, is great. Additionally, the new phones have significantly upgraded battery life, which is a major benefit.

Don’t be fooled by the similar design, these iPhones represent big steps forward that are attractive and highly effective.

Scores

Design

.
9

Usability

.
9

Display

10

Call and Signal Quality

.
9

Operating System

.
9

Email, Browsing, Calandar, Contacts

.
9

Media support

10

Camera

10

App support and functionality

.
9

Build Quality

10

Value for Money

.
.
8

Verdict

.
9
9
AVForumsSCORE
OUT OF
10

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