For the first time ever, Apple is selling two very big phones. The iPhone 14 Pro Max starts at $1,100, and the iPhone 14 Plus for $899, which goes on sale. And while there are obvious differences between the two phones, they might not be as major as you think. Here are six reasons to save $200 and pick the iPhone 14 Plus over the Pro Max.
The display is still excellent.
Like the 6.1-inch iPhone 14 and 14 Pro, the iPhone 14 Plus and 14 Pro Max have identical 6.7-inch screen sizes. However, they're not exactly created equally. On the iPhone 14 Pro Max, you get several features that aren't available on the Plus: ProMotion with a 120Hz refresh rate (versus 60Hz) and an always-on display.
The non-Pro iPhone 14 doesn't have ProMotion or is always on, but it's still a fantastic display. Mac World The non-Pro iPhone 14 doesn't have ProMotion or is always on, but it is still a tremendous display.
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
Those are fantastic features that Pro Max users will love. However, if you're coming from an iPhone 12 or XR, the display on the Plus will be just as good as you were used to on your old phone, just bigger. You've already lived for years without ProMotion or always-on, so you won't know what you're missing, and the iPhone 14 Pluss display is still great.
Battery life is actually superior.
We all know iPhones get great battery life, but Apple claims the iPhone 14 Plus has the best battery life. We'll run our tests soon, but early reviews corroborate Apple's estimates. Reviewers report a battery life of 20-21 hours in video rundown tests, which is about an hour longer than the iPhone 14 Pro Max in similar tests.
You're likely to get multiple days of use of the iPhone 14 Plus in real-world use. According to The Verges Allison Johnson, a day of moderate usage with about two hours of screen-on time and plenty of time away from Wi-Fi only drained the battery by about 25 percent. So if you're upgrading from an iPhone 11 or even an iPhone 13, the improvement will be staggering: you'll never have to worry about reaching for a charger again.
The cameras are still great.
Besides Dynamic Island, the rear camera is the biggest difference between the iPhone 14 Pro Max and 14 Plus. On the iPhone 14 Pro Max, you get a 48MP main lens and a 12MP telephoto camera, found on the 14 Plus. In fact, the iPhone 14 has a very similar camera to the iPhone 13, with a dual-camera setup that pairs a 12MP wide camera with a 12 MP ultra-wide camera. But that doesn't mean you won't take great photos with the Plus.
It only has two cameras, but the iPhone 14 takes very good photos. Mac World has only two cameras, but the iPhone 14 takes very good pictures.
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
The processors are basically the same.
Apple split the A15 processor into two flavors with the iPhone 13a 4-core GPU for the iPhone 13 and 13 mini and a 5-core GPU variant for the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max and took it even further with the iPhone 14. The iPhone 14 Pro models have Apple's newest A16 processor, while the iPhone 14 Plus has the higher-end version of last year's A15.
But while it might seem like a huge upgrade, it's not. In our testing, the A16 is barely faster than certainly not anything that's going to be noticeable in day-to-day use. So if you buy an iPhone 14 Plus, it won't feel any slower than an iPhone 14 Pro Max.
The Dynamic Island isn't a must-have feature yet.
The iPhone 14 Pro Max's biggest new feature isn't hardware. It's software. Dynamic Island, a feature that lives inside the new camera cutout, is easily the most interesting and intriguing feature of the new phone and will stand out on iPhones for years.
The iPhone 14 Pro Maxs Digital Island has tons of potential, but it's currently not living up to it. Mac World The iPhone 14 Pro Maxs Digital Island has tons of potential, but it's currently not living up to it.
Foundry
But it's not quite there yet. Most of the time, Dynamic Island is as lifeless as the notch, and even when iOS 16.1 launches with Live Activities, it'll take some time before developers properly update their apps to take advantage of it. It'll be a few months before all that happens, and by then will all be looking ahead to the iPhone 15 Plus, which will likely adopt the Dynamic Island too.
It could save your life.
Apple introduced two new iPhone features this year: Crash Detection and Emergency SOS via satellite. Those two features could save your life one day, and they're available on all iPhone 14 models, Pro or not.
