Sorry, Apple fans, but the iPhone 13 Pro Max is no longer the best iPhone on the market – you’re going to want to upgrade to the newer iPhone 14 Pro Max for that. The new device has an always-on display, 48MP main camera, no notch and newer chipset, making for an all-around better package.

That’s not to say the 14 Pro Max’s predecessor is bad, though. It’s got incredible battery life, cameras that can do pretty much anything you’d need on a smartphone, and is available in a range of muted, but classy, colors. Simply put, this is one of the leading contenders for the best smartphone in the world right now.

It now also appears with a 1TB storage option (not available on the iPhone 12), so if you’re a budding (or professional) film maker, you can fill this handset with content to your heart’s content.

It’s also got a ‘Pro’ price, starting at $1,099 / £1,049 / AU$1,849 and going all the way up to $1,599 / £1,549 / AU$2,719.

Yes, it’s a bit of a tired trope to moan about how expensive the iPhone can get at the top end, but Apple has charged top dollar for its best iPhone year on year, and yet they still remain among the most popular models, meaning ‘too expensive’ is starting to become rather subjective when it comes to reviewing.

That said, if you’re considering the iPhone 13 Pro Max then you’re probably after the best iPhone, and in that case you might want to wait a little longer, as we’re expecting to see the iPhone 14 Pro Max along with the rest of the iPhone 14 line on September 7. That’s sure to be an upgrade in a number of ways, and even if it doesn’t appeal it’s likely to mean price drops for this model.

In any case, ‘best’ is heavily subjective here, but if you can handle the gargantuan proportions of a phone with a 6.7-inch screen, then this is easily the best iPhone Apple has ever made… until the aforementioned iPhone 14 makes an appearance.

The design is almost identical to that of the 12 Pro Max that appeared in 2020, with the flat, industrial-looking stainless steel frame surrounding the massive OLED screen.

The large camera protrusion at the rear is noticeable (and it now sticks out even further to enable greater photography prowess). The new Pro comes in a fetching Sierra Blue too this year, which is a nice-looking, powdery color to enjoy.

The screen has been improved to not only include a 120Hz refresh rate, called ProMotion (which iPhone users have been asking for for years, but which to our eyes adds very little) but also higher maximum brightness and a smaller notch.

The shrinking of the notch is good, but it’s not game-changing – Apple needs to shrink it out of existence. However, the overall screen quality is stunning, whatever you’re looking at.

The key thing you’d buy the iPhone 13 Pro Max for, in our opinion, is its battery life. Apple has improved this again over the 12 Pro Max, which offered pretty good longevity, to the point where it’s no longer an issue.

Most of the time we’d make it into a second day before needing a charger, and even on a day of high-intensity use it was around 9pm before the phone totally died.

It remains a shame that Apple doesn’t bundle its higher-power iPhone charger in the box, though, so you’ll need to pay $19 / £19 / AU$29 for that speedy juicing.

The cameras, as we’ve alluded to, enable you to take a huge variety of snaps in a wider range of scenarios than ever. Apple has made a big deal about adding improved low-light capability and Night Mode to all of the three 12MP sensors on the rear, and the iPhone 13 Pro Max also comes with a nifty macrophotography mode.

This means the handset will automatically shift to the ultrawide camera when you get close to objects, and the effects are stellar.

Apple has balanced an impressive amount of power with ease of use, so you can take great snaps in auto mode, but you’re also easily able to play around with various settings for a more hands-on experience.

However, we’re not taken with the new Cinematic mode, which will automatically shift focus depending on where people are looking – it’s cool, but it doesn’t really add much.

Finally, another reason to save up and buy the iPhone 13 Pro Max is its performance – it’s ridiculously powerful, and is able to play games to a high graphical standard and perform intensive tasks like encoding video at a pretty nifty rate.

Most people buying this phone will never scratch the surface of what it can truly do, but videographers will really appreciate the increased storage, the number of shooting options and speed at which it can process edits.

Want more than a two-minute review? Read on to find out how the iPhone 13 Pro Max performed in our in-depth testing – the results of our battery life and camera tests in particular are pretty impressive.

The iPhone 13 Pro Max was unveiled on September 14, and you’ve been able to buy the handset from September 24.  The 13 Pro Max is the most expensive iPhone you can buy right now, with the cheapest model (128GB of storage) costing $1,099 / £1,049 / AU$1,849.

The 256GB model costs $1,199 / £1,149 / AU$2,019, the 512GB variant costs $1,399 / £1,349 / AU$2,369, and the 1TB model costs $1,599 / £1,549 / AU$2,719.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a 1TB smartphone, but it is the first time Apple has offered that much storage – and it’s going to cost you, so think carefully about whether you really need that much space.

Really, 1TB is only for those who are going to be using the iPhone 13 Pro Max for movie making and generating reams of 4K video at 60 frames per second, or thousands of maximum-resolution photos; most people won’t need more than 512GB.

Compare the best iPhone 13 Pro Max deals available

Design – more of the same

We’ll get this out of the way now: if you’re looking at the iPhone 13 Pro Max as your next phone, you surely have to know you’re getting a massive handset. And it is massive. This is not a phone for those wanting something that you can wrap a hand around or even reach a thumb the whole way across – you want screen, you want battery, and you’re ready to sacrifice the feel in the hand for it.

Let’s start by looking at how it’s put together. The stainless steel outer band, first seen on the iPhone 12 range last year, is back again, aping the design of the iPad Pro range for the last few years.

Even after a year, we’re still missing the curved back of the previous iPhone models, first seen on the iPhone 6. Yes, there’s a nice grippiness to the sharper, more industrial-looking edges of the new iPhone 13 Pro Max, and change is always welcome in the world of smartphone design, but it just feels less comfortable to hold.

Speaking of comfort, while we assume that you’re okay with the idea of the larger handset if you’re plumping for the iPhone 13 Pro Max, unless you’ve got very large hands it can be a bit of a challenge to wield.

We’ve noticed that using the phone for extended periods can stretch the fingers a little further than normal, and that can lead to some slight aches; our digits adapted over time, but it’s worth being aware of if you’ve decided you just want ‘that iPhone with the really long-lasting battery’.

The Lightning connector remains at the base of the phone, flanked by the speaker (well, one of them – the other is in the earpiece, and does a thoroughly good job of dispensing sound when you’re watching movies or listening to music).

While there would be numerous advantages to Apple switching the iPhone to USB-C at the bottom (faster charging and data transmission for one) it would clearly incur the wrath of a lot of people with iPhone chargers kicking around, so the miss isn’t really that strongly felt at this time.

We were sent the Sierra Blue version of the iPhone 13 Pro Max and, like the other colors in the range (graphite, gold and silver), it’s on the muted side to allow those who need to do more ‘professional’ things (like carry briefcases and have a weekly lunch with Tomi from Accounts) to have the phone in meetings and the like.

The blue is a strong addition to the line-up in the iPhone Pro range, but despite the phone having Apple’s super-tough Ceramic Shield on the front, we would still suggest you pop this thing in a case.

We still managed to dull the edges off the iPhone 12 Pro Max, as well as scratching the front screen, over the course of a few months’ use – so while the 13 Pro Max is a more robust phone than iPhones from years ago, we still think it’s worth protecting your investment.

MagSafe, the magnetic connection on the back of the new iPhone range that allows you to wirelessly connect chargers and other accessories, also returns – and it’s becoming more of a selling point.

We’re still not seeing swathes of MagSafe accessories on the market just yet, but that makes sense given that, other than the new iPhones, only the iPhone 12 range supports it.

Now there are four more phones that use MagSafe, expect more cases, stands, controllers and gimbals to appear – and it’s really cool to just slip on the round metal disc and see your phone start charging instantly.

iPhone 13 Pro Max Display – Brighter, But 120Hz Misses

There are three key changes to the 6.7-inch display on the iPhone 13 Pro Max that are worth discussing: the smaller notch, a screen that refreshes at up to 120Hz (meaning smoother scrolling and transitions throughout) and improved brightness when frolicking outdoors in the sunny sunshine.

The reduced size of the notch is the most obvious of the three, and while it’s welcome it doesn’t really change a lot in terms of the iPhone design – there’s still a notch encroaching on your movies and games, where other brands are playing with smaller punch-holes and even completely invisible cameras.

That said, we’re not saying the notch is without its merits – when you find that you’re able to unlock your phone with your face from a surprising angle (where you think ‘surely it can’t pick my face up from here’), you can forgive the need for multiple sensors to be wedged in at the top of the screen.

We’d like to see Apple miniaturize this a little more though, and get the cameras and sensors into the rim of the phone – or at least let us see the battery percentage shown constantly, rather than having to swipe down. When we heard word of a smaller notch coming, we had hoped that the little beacon of battery life would be a constant option, but sadly no.

Apple’s 120Hz display technology is called ProMotion, and has been used on the iPad Pro range for years. It’s surprising that it’s taken this long to appear on an iPhone, simply because the technology clearly exists within Apple, and because most rivals have had it on flagship and even some mid-range phones for a while now.

However, we can also see why Apple has eschewed its presence until now – it comes at the cost of battery life, and, to our eyes, doesn’t always add a lot to the browsing experience.

A quick explainer if you need it: the refresh rate is the amount of time your screen will show a new image per second – 120Hz means you’ll see 120 images per second, which means that scrolling a web page or flipping through Twitter will be smoother.

However, often you don’t need that high refresh rate if you’re just looking at a static image, so Apple has made the feature dynamic, with the phone intelligently deciding the refresh rate, and dropping down to 10Hz when needed to save battery life.

A 120Hz display is definitely a luxury extra rather than a must-have feature, and in our scrolling tests we noticed that things didn’t always look that much smoother compared to the screen on the 11 Pro Max – when you peer closely you can see the difference, but in reality it isn’t a huge change.

What was noticeable was that the screen scrolled in a far more ‘stable’ way, meaning that our finger flicks were far more accurate, and we didn’t send the rows of text flying around with the merest quiver of a digit. Text was also clearer as it flew by, showing that there is a benefit here, even if it’s a modest one.

While we have called this a luxury feature, the iPhone 13 Pro Max is presented as one of the most luxurious phones on the market, so a 120Hz screen is something that Apple really should have added by now, and its presence feels more like a box-tick than an impressive new feature.

Another purported advantage of a 120Hz screen is for gaming – the increased frame rate is supposed to yield superior play thanks to smoother motion and the ability to react that much quicker in games – but quite honestly, we couldn’t see a difference compared to older screens.

We chose Aldo’s Odyssey and Grid Autosport to test the feature out, and both looked – and played – identically to on the 11 Pro Max, with the smoothness and graphical performance appearing to be exactly the same.

Do 120Hz Refresh Rates Matter?

Don’t get us wrong, it looks good, but it’s hard to see what 120Hz is adding here other than a touch more fluidity. Developers will likely need to optimize some games to make full use of the slickness of 120Hz, so perhaps that’s what we’re seeing here – we’ve asked for more clarification.

Apple is also touting greater outdoor brightness on the iPhone 13 Pro Max, with higher peak levels of 1200 nits (read: brighter than a lot of other smartphones out there). Compared to the 11 Pro Max, it was easier to see what was on the screen in brighter conditions, although it’s still something of a squint-fest when you’re trying to watch a movie in direct sunlight.

However, that screen brightness increase makes the 13 Pro Max more usable than any iPhone before it and a good example of Apple focusing on the changes that really will make a difference in day-to-day use.

Underpinning all these changes is the fact the iPhone 13 Pro Max has a stunning OLED display, with incredibly rich color reproduction and great use of things like Dolby Vision playback for when you want to watch movies with that extra level of detail and clarity.

The effect is pretty stunning – even though it’s not that new, as the iPhone and many other smartphones have had great screens for many years – and it’s worth remembering that you’re getting a phone that’s a genuine alternative to watching on the big screen when it comes to quality.

We noticed that Apple’s changes to the brightness of the screen are minor, but noticeable when you place the iPhone 13 Pro Max alongside an older phone. Interestingly Apple has wandered more towards more saturated colors with the latest display – particularly when showing off red elements of the image.

This is something that Samsung has always been famed for, so it’s intriguing to see Apple decide to add a little more artificial ‘pop’ to its displays with the iPhone 13 Pro range.

Battery Life – Finally Good

Let’s not beat around the bush here – you’ve already seen us say it, but the battery life of the iPhone 13 Pro Max is the biggest reason why you’d buy this phone.

Sure, you like the larger display to watch all your fancy movies and TikTok clips on, but in reality the notion of owning an iPhone with actually decent battery life is going to attract hordes of people to this model.

Why is everyone proclaiming that the iPhone 13 Pro Max battery life is so good? Well, it just feels robust. On a day of ‘middling’ use – mostly consisting of web browsing and music streaming over Wi-Fi, with three trips out for running and picking up kids from school – we took the phone off charge at 7:30am, and only managed to kill it by 4am the next day by downloading two huge games… that’s 35 hours of battery life.

We performed a side-by-side test with the iPhone 11 Pro Max, starting with both phones at 100% battery, streaming two hours and 20 minutes of YouTube on full brightness. The older model (which, we must stress, has been used for over a year, so there will be some battery degradation) fell to 81% in that time, where the new Pro Max only dropped to 91%.

Even if you were feeling generous to the older iPhone, that’s a massive gulf in battery management.

We’re not claiming that the iPhone 13 Pro Max has bulletproof battery life – on a super-hard day of testing, which saw us using the camera for hours, running around with Spotify playing in the background, and going in and out of signal, making phone calls, running a YouTube test and generally fiddling about with the phone, we only managed to get 14 hours of use before reaching for the charger.

But don’t get us wrong: in day-to-day use, you’ll regularly find that you’ve got a good third of the battery left by the time you go to bed, even with a few heavier tasks like music streaming or navigating using Google Maps for a few hours, so you’re less likely to need a power bank with this new phone.

In our lab testing we saw a score of 12 hours and 16 minutes for continuously browsing the web over a 5G connection until the battery was flat, which is pretty impressive, and the best we’ve seen from a flagship phone – the handsets that have performed better are usually cheaper phones that don’t have things like fast-charging capability.

Oh, while we’re on that subject… we’re still strongly of the opinion that Apple is being unfair by not including a charging block in the box with the iPhone 13 Pro Max. Yes, it definitely does save on waste from people having unnecessary chargers when many iPhone users likely have a few Lightning leads kicking around.

We also get why there’s a USB-C to Lightning cable in the box – so that users can connect easily to one of the new MacBooks or other laptops on the market. But that lead also facilitates the faster charging this phone is capable of, meaning you’ll want to buy the 20W charging block to get that sweet juice into your phone quickly.

It would be better if Apple gave you the option of whether or not to have a charger at purchase – either giving you a small discount for not having one, or just a general sense of being a good person and helping the planet. (Although, in fairness, keeping the cost of the phone the same as last year is a pretty good move when there are some decent hardware upgrades in the mix).

Why would you want that faster charger? Well, if you suddenly remember that you’re useless at life and have let your phone run out of battery, we found that in 15 minutes we could replenish the phone to a third full – enough for up to 10 hours of use, based on our testing.

Another 15 minutes on the charger got the phone up to 53%, showing that the fast charger is definitely worth it. However, the rate of charging slows down after that, with the phone getting to around 80% after an hour, and then requiring another 80 minutes to get to 100%.

The larger iPhones have always been the longest-lasting in each range, obviously, but this battery performance is a level above for a phone made by Apple.

It finally removes ‘Yes, but it hasn’t got very good battery life’ from the equation if you’re deciding between Apple and Android devices, as it’ll be more than serviceable for anyone who regularly charges nightly, and will save the bacon of those ‘forgetful chargers’ who don’t top up each night and then constantly pester you for a charger.

Camera – Making Tiny Things Amazing

While we think the battery life is the real selling point of the iPhone 13 Pro Max, a close second is the camera offering – while the improvements here are only tweaks from the iPhone 12 Pro Max, those tweaks are useful and impressive in a number of ways and make it one of the best camera phones around.

Let’s run through the changes quickly: the main camera (which Apple calls the Wide camera, confusingly) has a 12MP sensor, with larger 1.9μm pixels placed on the largest sensor Apple’s ever put in a smartphone in order to absorb even more light, which combined with an f/1.5 aperture enables you to capture some seriously impressive low-light images, as you’ll see in the samples below.

The Ultra Wide sensor (which zooms out from the main image) has also been upgraded – the megapixel count here is also 12MP which is the same as last year, but it now packs Apple’s Night Mode functionality, with the phone able to take some breathtaking photos in near-pitch black situations, as long as you’re able to hold the handset perfectly still for the necessary amount of time.

The Telephoto lens, the one that can zoom in on distant objects, has been upgraded to be able to zoom in three times optically – meaning that it’s physically magnifying the image, rather than doing so digitally and creating a grainier shot. That’s a useful addition, but it’s a shame you can’t also do 2x zoom optically – as sometimes that would be preferable.

Sadly, the zoom distance is fixed, so you’ll need to make do – although the iPhone’s chipset does a pretty good job of cleaning up the digital zoom.

When it comes to the quality of the photos the iPhone 13 Pro Max is capable of producing day to day, there’s a clear and obvious improvement over last year’s model.

What’s interesting is that it appears to be in the processing of images that the improvements have been made – in some shots the subject was clearer and brighter where a strong backlight was present (which is tricky to manage on a smartphone camera), while in others it was clear that the 13 Pro Max had decided to darken the photo in order to preserve more detail.

This is useful to prevent overexposure, and leads to more attractive shots overall – although the improvements aren’t huge over the 12 Pro Max, or even the 11 Pro Max, they’re noticeable and welcome.

Macrophotography

One of the key changes to the iPhone 13 Pro Max camera setup comes in the shape of the new macrophotography mode, which activates instantly when you move the phone closer to a subject. It’s quite a jarring jump, but suddenly a world of blur becomes clear, and you can take some fantastic pictures.

In fact, it’s only the shadow of the phone falling on some subjects, due to the camera being so close, that causes any issue with the photos – we took some stunning snaps, and we can see the macro mode being something we play with for hours, as all kinds of subjects can look fascinatingly different when viewed ultra-close.

Low-light and Night Mode

Apple has improved all three rear camera sensors for the iPhone 13 Pro Max to make them more effective in low light, and the results are pretty spectacular in a number of ways.

The first is that, generally, low-light shots (not using the long-exposure, hold-still method of Night Mode) look far brighter. Everything we shot looked clear, sharp and bright, and while there was a fair amount of grain in images we definitely got the best low-light photos we’ve seen from any iPhone.

This is partly to do with the new sensor, but also the use of the LiDAR function (which uses lasers to spot where surfaces are) as well as excellent stabilization on board – these mean that the autofocus was superb and sometimes yielded photos that looked brighter than the subject did in real life without losing definition to keep the shutter open for longer.

a night scene of a garden, with trees at the top and sweeping lawn

One interesting quirk of the multi-lens setup of the new phone: in low light, the iPhone 13 Pro Max once again, when using the telephoto lens and instead of using the optical sensor, defaults to the main wide camera and crops in digitally.

It’s not a huge issue, as the picture quality still gets processed to a decent level, but it’s annoying that it’s not highlighted in the process, and Apple has been doing this for years now.

The other enhancement the new, more sensitive sensor has brought with it is that Night Mode doesn’t activate as often. While the results from Night Mode can be incredible (see the samples below) it’s annoying to have to hold the phone steady for a second or two when you just want to take a quick snap in the evening, and the new sensor often negates the need for that.

Photographic Styles

We were surprised when Apple came out with Photographic Styles as a Big New Feature () on the iPhone 13 range – while there are five pre-programmed settings (standard, rich contrast, vibrant, warm and cool) to make the image more vibrant or alter the color temperature, we didn’t see how this was really different from a filter.

But what’s actually happening here is that the color and contrast of the photo are being altered when you take it, rather than an effect being applied post-capture, and which you can undo.

This means you can choose to shoot in richer contrast every time if that’s your style, or take a set of photos that are a little less warm if that’s what the project calls for.

It’s more akin to the photo style options on DSLRs and mirrorless cameras than an Instagram filter, and, while we didn’t really use it that much, it does add another interesting new layer of functionality.

Cinematic Mode

Apple’s other new feature is Cinematic Mode, where the ‘rack focus’ (as in, which part of the shot in a movie is in focus) will change automatically depending on where the focus of the viewer should be.

This means that if the protagonist in your movie looks at someone else and stops speaking, the focus will shift to them and blur out the original speaker- it certainly looks dynamic and more movie-like. You can even alter the focus after the movie has been taken in the on-phone editing suite, if someone speaking doesn’t quite look as sharp as you want.

You might assume that this is a mode designed for professionals so that they don’t have to worry about rack focus when shooting movies, but given that it’s also appearing on the regular iPhone 13 and 13 mini, as well as the 13 Pro, it’s clear that this isn’t exclusively a pro feature, and something the everyday user can play with.

While it’s a fun tool, it seems odd that Apple’s made such a big deal of this. Yes, we can see that it will yield some cool videos if you want to film your friends talking about something or everyone having fun at a party, but that’s quite rare for home footage.

It feels more like you’d need to remember to use Cinematic Mode when the conditions are just right, where the focus of your movie is constantly shifting – and we’re not sure how often most people will make ‘proper’ movies’ at home, rather than just capturing a video of their dog doing a backflip for a treat or similar.

Portrait Mode

Another enhancement Apple has made is, once again, refining the background-blurring Portrait mode on both the front and back cameras.

The forward-facing TrueDepth camera can take some truly stunning selfies (well, subject dependent, of course…) and the blurred-background pictures you can get with the rear-facing camera was something we enjoyed playing with, getting some impressive shots.

It’s the foundational elements of the Portrait-mode shots that have been upgraded: the lighting is more natural, the lighting is more natural, and the depth-of-field or ‘bokeh’ effects have been improved so that the things that should be in focus are in focus – the edges of someone’s head for example (and even their stray hairs).

You can even use Portrait mode to capture stationary objects that aren’t human or animal – being able to a heavy depth of field to a trail or forest leads to some lovely pictures when you’re out and about.

We’re a bit sad that Portrait mode only works in 1x or 3x zoom though – on the 11 Pro Max, 2x zoom was the perfect length to capture a subject, and we found that we constantly had to move the camera forward and back to get the right image with the 13 Pro Max. The 12 Pro Max increased this to 2.5x zoom, but now we’ve gone even further.ProRAW

ProRAW is back again on the iPhone 13 Pro Max (and it’s now available on the iPhone 13 Pro too) – and it’s a bit of a gateway drug to ‘proper’ photography.

A quick overview: most phones shoot in the JPEG format, with images processed in-camera to tweak things like color and contrast, and do a jolly good job of it; however, the images are also compressed, and much of the image data discarded, which leaves you with less latitude to edit your shots later.

Most modern cameras also enable you to shoot in raw mode, which captures unprocessed and uncompressed (but very large) image files, giving you plenty of leeway to fine-tune the exposure, color, contrast and more in post-processing.

ProRAW gives you the best of both formats, allowing the user to get an enhanced and ready-to-go snap using the smarts of Apple’s A15 image processor, but retaining all the information to allow you to edit the photo afterwards if you want – this is easily doable in a program such as LightRoom, and we really enjoyed playing with the ability to raise or drop shadows and get some really cool extra effects by altering the exposure and sharpness, thanks to having more image data to play with..

iPhone 13 Pro Max photo showing a long forest trail

A ProRAW photo taken and edited on the iPhone itself from the inbuilt editing app (Image credit: TechRadar)

Now this really is the kind of thing that we’d expect from a ‘Pro’ handset, and it’s a feature that’s really fun to explore and play with.

Speaking of pro modes that videographers will want to use, there’s also ProRes support here, which is a high-quality, lossy video compression format that Apple created to let creative types manage video up to 8K, and which is used regularly throughout the industry now.

The inclusion of support for this format on an iPhone is going to be useful to those who want to shoot commercials or high-end video and send off the edited results from the field – that’s not something that most of us will do regularly, but such additions show that Apple wants to make it clear that the iPhone 13 Pro range is a step above the ‘basic’ models.

iOS 15 and Supreme Power

Apple is making some bold claims about the iPhone 13 Pro Max, selling it as one of the most powerful smartphones out there right now – and the claims seem pretty justified based on our testing.

While the numbers that we saw in our benchmarking absolutely back Apple up (and we’ll get onto that in a minute), the real-world performance is what matters. The ‘issue’ is that smartphones are already more than powerful enough to handle most things you want to throw at them, and the fact the 13 Pro Max is lightning-fast at switching between apps is no surprising thing.

When it comes to raw figures the results speak for themselves: this phone is twice as fast (nearly) at transcoding Adobe video from 4K to 1080p) as the 11 Pro Max, and a second faster than the 12 Pro Max from last year. Apple’s claims that the new A15 chipset is powering things along more efficiently than ever before really do stack up.

But we were surprised to see that some high-power games, like Grid Autosport, didn’t load that much faster – the game’s high levels of detail and graphical fidelity mean it’s going to take a few seconds to load on any device, but we expected it to be a lot quicker on the iPhone 13 Pro Max compared to a phone from two years ago.

That’s splitting hairs somewhat though, as there’s no doubt that when it comes to things like editing photos, saving video and performing the heavy tasks the iPhone 13 Pro Max is more than adept. In fact, it’s only bettered by the iPad Pro range in our testing – which is a far more expensive device, and arguably more likely to be picked up by those looking for a high-power device.

Let’s quickly look at those benchmarks: the iPhone 13 Pro Max scored far better in terms of framerate, multi-core capability and speed of video transcoding when compared to the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra – almost twice as fast in some cases.

However, keeping in mind what we said above about real-world use, we wouldn’t read too much into that performance, as both phones operate sublimely well; but if you’re a creative looking for a phone that can help you record high-quality video or work on high-power tasks, this is your phone.

The upgraded iOS 15 is coming to most iPhones, so the new capabilities aren’t too much to get excited about on the new iPhone 13 Pro Max, as you can get the same tricks on older models.

That said, there are a few improvements that you can look forward to: the new Weather app is hugely enhanced, with more accurate location tracking, improved animations and things that are genuinely useful, like radar maps to show heat and rainfall patterns.

Apple is making a big deal about Focus Mode, which allows you to turn off certain distractions when you need them. This feels like a powerful tool, but in our testing we didn’t really get much from it. Perhaps it’s something that needs to be perfected over a few months, allowing you to work out who you want to hear from and in what scenarios, but we found we kept cancelling the settings.

Perhaps we just need more discipline here – but it would be nice to see a few more default modes, or more in-depth tutorials to see how useful this can be.

Another change that’s worth noting is to notifications – it’s great to be able to lump together non-time-sensitive updates, and only see them each morning and afternoon. We instantly found we didn’t care about most of them, and just switched them off in the menu, and having a moment to perform that cleaning was handy.

We do like the new ‘Cards’ used to show images in Messages too – it’s a small change, but they were fun to scroll through.

The post iPhone 13 Pro Max Review appeared first on Review Products.

Apple’s desktop strategy has taken an interesting turn this year. Not only has the company finally updated the Mac Pro, which was its last Intel-based computer, but there’s also a new version of the Mac Mini with a more powerful processor. This means there are more choices than ever, with new options at the ultra-high end as well as the mainstream-pro level. In between those sits the updated second-gen Mac Studio, with your choice of M2 Max and M2 Ultra processors.

We had thought this device might replace the Mac Pro or serve as the default option for content creators, but there’s more to it than that. In this review, we’ll check out what’s new with the 2023 Mac Studio and help you decide whether it’s the perfect middle ground, or whether any of its siblings would better suit your needs.

Mac Studio price in India

The Mac Studio is sold without a monitor, keyboard or mouse – all you get in the box is the unit itself, a power cable, and some documentation. Prices start at Rs. 2,09,900 for the base variant with an M2 Max SoC (12-core CPU, 30-core GPU), 32GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. A slightly more powerful M2 Max with 38 GPU cores instead of 30 will cost Rs. 20,000 more.

In typical Apple fashion, nothing can be upgraded post-purchase, and configuration options are extremely expensive. For example, you’d have to pay a shocking Rs. 40,000 more to step up to 64GB of RAM and Rs. 20,000 more to double your storage to 1TB. The SSD is actually removable, according to teardowns, but you can’t swap or upgrade it yourself due to software-level locks.

Options with the M2 Ultra SoC, which we’ll talk about later in this review, start at Rs. 4,19,900, which means you’re in a whole different class – this isn’t just a simple spec bump. This version of the Mac Studio will have 64GB RAM minimum, and a 1TB SSD. There are two versions of this SoC as well, with 16 extra GPU cores on the higher-end one raising the price by Rs. 1,00,000. You can step up to 128GB or 192GB of RAM (for an eye-watering Rs. 80,000 and Rs. 1,60,000 more respectively) plus up to 8TB of storage (another Rs. 2,20,000). That means the top-end spec goes for Rs. 8,99,900 – and that’s before adding any software.

Apple’s Studio Display would be well suited to the Mac Studio, and if you want to know whether it’s worth the Rs. 1,59,900 base price, check out my impressions of it in my recent Mac mini review. I also used Apple’s Magic Keyboard With Touch ID and Number Pad, Magic Mouse, and Magic Trackpad during this review. Those are priced at Rs. 19,500, Rs. 9,500 and Rs. 14,500 respectively – so that’s well over Rs. 10,00,000 right there.

Mac Studio (M2 Max, 2023) design

The most obvious way to describe the Mac Studio is to say it looks like a taller Mac mini. It’s a simple, effective design that belies the amount of power inside. The Mac Studio is exactly as wide and deep, but over twice as tall, making it much less easy to tuck away than the mini. Stackable Mac mini accessories such as hubs should look right at home. It’s made of the same silver aluminum and has the same body texture. The Apple logo on the top is also larger, and the base a little more raised. This device is clearly meant to sit on your desk. I’m most thrilled to see ports on the front; something I’ve complained about with multiple generations of desktop Macs.

There’s very little else to say about design – the power LED on the front is surprisingly large. The back is where all the rest of the ports are, and you’ll also see a large air vent. In India, the AC power cord you get in the box unfortunately has a 16A power plug, and I’ve noted the inconvenience of this before, especially when power consumption shouldn’t be anywhere near that high. If you’re using a Mac Studio with a Studio Display, you’ll need two of these uncommon outlets at your desk. At least the power supply is built in, and you don’t have to deal with an external brick.

The M2 Max-based version weighs 2.7kg while the M2 Ultra-based version is a surprising 3.62kg, probably due to a needing a more robust cooling system. Both are still portable enough to be carried around if you need to work on location often. In fact, the box it comes in has a cloth handle so you can do just that. Plenty of companies also sell rack-mount adapters so you can slot one or more of these units into a standard equipment cage.

Mac Studio (M2 Max, 2023) specifications and software

I received an M2 Max-powered Mac Studio for this review, with the 30-core GPU, 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD, which would be priced at Rs. 2,29,900 in India. The M2 Max is superior to the M2 and M2 Pro (which is where the Mac mini tops out), but fits below the M2 Ultra and even the M1 Ultra. The entire M2 family is fabricated on a 5nm process.

Apple says the M2 Max is made up of 67 billion transistors. It features the same 12-core CPU block and 16-core ‘Neural Engine’ AI accelerator as the M2 Pro but GPU resources jump up to 30 or 38 cores and RAM support goes up to 96GB. You also get double the video encoding resources in hardware, including acceleration for Apple’s own ProRES format, compared to the M2 Pro. That’s a large part of how the Mac Studio is positioned above the Mac mini – these differences won’t matter much for everyday photo and video editing but will certainly come into play when editing or recolouring multiple 4K or higher-res video streams, processing 3D models and visual effects, and even training machine learning models.

The Mac Studio will update to the latest version of macOS on first boot Apple

Compared to a previous-gen Mac Studio with the M1 Max SoC, Apple says this model with the M2 Max can render motion graphics in Adobe AfterEffects up to 50 percent faster, or build Xcode projects 25 percent faster.

If you’re splurging on a higher-end Mac Studio, you’ll get the M2 Ultra SoC which is Apple’s current top-end in-house processor and essentially doubles everything about the M2 Max – in fact, it’s two M2 Max dies joined together with a custom high-speed interconnect. That’s around 134 billion transistors, according to Apple, and means you get 24 CPU cores and either 60 or 76 GPU cores, plus twice the Neural Engine capacity, memory bandwidth, and media encoding resources.

A 2023 Mac Studio with an M2 Max SoC can drive up to four 6K displays plus another at 4K 60Hz, or two 4K displays plus one 8K at 60Hz. If that wasn’t enough, the M2 Ultra-powered variants can handle up to eight 4K, six 6K or three 8K 60Hz displays – and you can use that headroom for higher refresh rates on fewer displays, and play with different permutations thereof.

On the rear panel, you get four Thunderbolt 4 (40Gbps) Type-C ports, two USB 3.1 Gen2 (10Gbps) Type-A ports, 10Gb Ethernet, HDMI, and a 3.5mm combo audio socket. There’s also the three-pin AC mains inlet and a power button. It’s nice to see legacy USB Type-A ports, but connectivity on the front is even better. On M2 Max-powered units these two Type-C ports work at USB 3.1 Gen2 (10Gbps) speed but the M2 Ultra can drive more Thunderbolt 4 ports so you get all that bandwidth. The card slot supports SDXC cards but not the newer SDExpress format.

Like the Mac mini, there’s a built-in speaker which is decent enough for notifications but you wouldn’t want to use it for music. If you’re connected to a Studio Display which has its own speakers, or any other external ones, this speaker will be bypassed. As for wireless communications, there’s Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.

MacOS is of course preloaded and you’ll need an iCloud account to set up any current-day Mac. You get all of the preloaded apps including Safari, Apple Music, Apple TV, Books, FaceTime, iMovie, GarageBand, Mail, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and Maps. There is of course the company’s own App Store, and all the iCloud ecosystem tie-ins such as Find My. If you also use an iPhone, iPad and/or AirPods with the same Apple account, you’ll be able to sync content across them easily.

Mac Studio (M2 Max, 2023) specifications and software

When you first power up the Mac Studio, you’re guided through a fairly lengthy setup process. You’ll have to sign in or create a new Apple ID, and you can import data from iCloud or another Apple device automatically. A few security features are enabled by default – your SSD is encrypted, the version of macOS you have installed is verified to be unmodified, booting from other media isn’t possible. Your SSD is also encrypted by default. These are the first signs that the Mac Studio is intended to be used in a production environment. My Apple accessories were detected automatically and I was able to enroll my fingerprint seamlessly. On first boot, I was offered upgrades to macOS Ventura 13.5 and the Apple Studio Display firmware 16.4.

There’s really nothing to be said about everyday performance – it’s perfectly fine. If you want to know more about using macOS and Apple’s monitor and accessories, check out our Mac mini review. In short, everything’s very expensive but you won’t get the same experience and some features such as Touch ID with third-party products. One little note is that as much as I like having USB Type-C ports on the front, you’ll need to hold the Mac Studio down with one hand when plugging in or unplugging devices with your other hand, since it isn’t very heavy.

The 2023 Mac Studio is available with either the M2 Max or M2 Ultra SoC Apple

Things only really start to feel different when running benchmarks. Starting with Geekbench 6, I got scores of 2,664 in the single-core CPU test, 14,508 in the multi-core test, and 74,465 in the GPU OpenCL test. For reference, the Mac mini (M2 Pro, 2023) scored a completely unsurprising 2,654 and 14,208 in the CPU-based scores but its GPU score was significantly lower at 49,686. Cinebench R23’s render test posted single-core and all-cores scores of 1,660 and 14,539 respectively, which are again at par with what the Mac mini managed.

SSD performance, as measured by AmorphousDiskMark, indicated sequential read and write speeds of 6,497.12MBps and 7,044MBps, which is also on par with what the Mac mini was capable of. As you can see, depending on your workload, you might be perfectly fine with Apple’s much less expensive desktop. In such cases, you’ll have to spend far more on the M2 Ultra SoC to get to the next performance tier.

We start to see the M2 Max-based Mac Studio set itself apart when it comes to content creation and more holistic tests. The browser-based WebXprt benchmark managed 255 points, Basemark Web test showed a score of 2,285.41, and Jetstream 2 posted 320.501. The LuxMark render test posted a score of 39,217 for the standard LuxBall scene, and IndigoBench’s Bedroom and Supercar scene tests managed 1.679 and 3.848 Megasamples per second respectively. Blender’s popular Barcelona Pavilion Demo took 7 minutes, 2 seconds to render and the Classroom scene took 5 minutes, 50 seconds.

Using Final Cut Pro to transcode a 23.8GB ProRES 4K file shot with an iPhone 13 Pro to H.254 1080p took approximately 37 seconds, and keeping the resolution at 4K, that only rose to approximately 1 minute, 48 seconds.

Coming to graphics performance, GFXBench’s Aztec Ruins and Car Chase test runs both maxed out at 60fps, likely due to being constrained by the Studio Display. The same tests set to render off-screen at 4K pushed out a whopping 144.934fps and 589.78fps respectively, which is considerably higher than what the Mac mini managed. Unigine’s Valley benchmark posted 114.6fps at 1920×1080 using the Ultra quality preset with AA set to 4X. AAA games are still relatively rare on the Mac platform, but the trusty Rise of the Tomb Raider averaged 111fps at 1920×1080, 75fps at 2560×1440, and 38fps at 4K, all using the High quality preset.

The Mac Studio’s cooling system was barely audible. At no point during testing did I even notice fan noise. The top of the unit only got slightly warm.

Verdict

All of our performance testing and observations apply to the M2 Max-based Mac Studio. This SoC is notably faster than the M2 Pro in some areas but not all and you should really examine your workload and future requirements carefully before spending your money on the Mac Studio vs the Mac mini. You should really consider the M2 Ultra version of the Mac Studio a completely different product. Its performance and price puts it in another class altogether, and the target market is also different. This machine will likely suffice for anyone who has heavy creative production work.

That relegates the brand new Mac Pro to an extremely niche audience – it’s only for those who need expansion cards for specific workflow environments such as a fibre-based network interface, more NVMe storage, and low-latency audio/video interfaces. The Mac Studio offers none of this expandability (aside from what you can do with external Thunderbolt devices), but that should be fine for a lot of creative workers.

The Mac Studio is great at handling content creation workloads Apple

Considering how powerful the Mac Studio is, it’s quite remarkable how Apple managed to keep it this small. The tradeoff is upgradability – absolutely nothing about the Mac Studio’s internal components can be upgraded or even swapped out. Apple’s RAM and storage configuration options at the time of purchase are infuriatingly overpriced, but there’s nothing anyone can do about that.

Video editors, 3D artists and software developers who deal with a lot of high-resolution content seem to be the primary target audience for the Mac Studio. It’s potentially good value for money, but you should really study all the options available to you within Apple’s current catalogue before deciding to buy it.

Price: Rs. 2,09,900 (as reviewed)

Pros:

• Very good performance
• Compact and quiet
• Ports on the front

Cons:

• RAM and storage not upgradeable
• Expensive configuration options

Ratings (out of 5):

• Design: 4
• Performance: 4.5
• Software: 4.5
• Value for Money: 3.5
• Overall: 4

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