(upbeat music)

This is the iPhone 12 Pro Max.

It is one of four iPhone 12 models this year,

and it is the biggest iPhone ever made.

And it comes with big ambitions.

It has the largest screen ever on an iPhone,

it has the biggest camera sensor of any iPhone,

including the other iPhone 12s.

Has a 5G radio, it's got a bigger battery.

This is the most iPhone you can get.

And it's priced to match.

It starts at 1099 with 128 gigs of storage,

and it goes up to 1399 for 512 gigs of storage

with no carrier discounts like the regular iPhone 12.

It is a lot of phone, it might be too much phone.

(upbeat music)

Yeah, let's start with the size.

I am a big phone person, I always buy the biggest one.

I spend so much time using my phone

that I appreciate a bigger battery and a larger display.

And I have big hands, so, it's cool.

So trust me when I say the iPhone 12 Pro Max is real big.

It's right on the edge of being too big.

The measurements don't tell the whole story.

By the numbers, it's just a little bit bigger

than the 11 Pro Max.

But the new design with flat sides

makes it feel much bigger than it is.

And it makes it slightly harder to hold

than a phone with curved sides.

And it's heavier than the 11 Pro Max and the Note 20 Ultra,

so it feels even bigger.

When I reviewed the regular 12 Pro, I said it was so pretty

that I felt bad putting it into a case.

But with the 12 Pro Max, I feel like I have to keep it

in its case, just to make it easier to hold.

And the case makes it even bigger.

So what I'm saying is that it's big.

Even if you're a big phone person,

I don't think it's too big, it's still workable,

but it is right on the edge.

And to be clear, I think that choice is a good thing.

Apple has more phone sizes available

than ever before this year,

including the new iPhone 12 Mini,

which Dieter has a review of up on the channel.

I'm just saying you might want to find a way to safely

see the 12 Pro Max's size in person before making a call.

All that size allows for the biggest feature difference

between the 12 Pro Max and the rest of the iPhone 12 line,

the camera system.

The basics are the same as the 12 Pro, three lenses,

a wide, an ultrawide and a tele

with a LiDAR sensor that enables portrait photos

in night mode.

The ultrawide sensor is the same as the 12 and 12 Pro,

so I won't spend a lot of time on it,

except to say that it's useful and fun

to have an ultrawide camera.

It's a noticeable improvement over the ultrawide

on the 11 Pro,

but it still takes basically medium quality photos

compared to the main camera.

It's that main camera and the telephoto

that are very different on a 12 Pro Max.

The wide has the same f/1.6 lens as the 12 and 12 Pro,

but it also has a much larger physical sensor

that can capture more light with less noise.

The wide camera is also stabilized differently

than the other 12s which stabilize the lens.

The iPhone 12 Pro Max

uses something called sensor-shift stabilization,

which moves the sensor itself around

to reduce vibration and less blur.

You will notice a huge difference in most cases,

but sensor-shift works a little better

for things like taking photos out of a moving car.

The bigger sensor also has an impressive maximum ISO

which is a measure of light sensitivity.

The 12 Pro Max has a top ISO of 7616.

All of this means that the wide camera

on the iPhone 12 Pro Max

is one of the most confident smartphone cameras

I've ever used.

It can take great photos in a huge variety of situations.

But whether you'll get any value out of it all

depends on light.

In sunlight and other bright situations,

photos from the 12 Pro Max and the 12 Pro

look identical to me.

And honestly we're at the point where photos

from all the major flagships are starting to look the same.

Yes, there are differences,

the Pixel Five is a little more contrasty.

The iPhone still booth shadows most aggressively.

And the Note 20 does some weird things

with reds and yellows.

But when any of these cameras gets enough light,

they produce photos that are more alike than different.

It's when the light starts to get dimmer

that the 12 Pro Max really starts to stand out.

Take this photo I took at sunset.

All the phones did a good job but the 12 Pro Max

has far less noise, better and more accurate colors

and more detail.

In this shot under slightly darker conditions,

most of the phones automatically shift into night mode

where they take multiple long exposures

and merge them together.

But the 12 Pro Max's bigger sensor

with its higher maximum ISO means

it did not automatically go into night mode.

You can see that details are crisper, there's less blur,

and the photo is overall more true to life.

And when the 12 Pro max does go into night mode,

it does it for shorter exposures than the 12 Pro.

In situations where the 12 Pro

would take a three second exposure,

the 12 hour max only needed a one second shot

resulting in a sharper photo.

The LiDAR sensor means you can shoot portraits in night mode

using the wide camera

which combined with that better low light performance

means that night mode portraits are better and more detailed

on the 12 Pro Max than the 12 Pro and Pixel Five.

Nice, look, I'm saying photos in bright light

are awash between the flagships,

but when it comes to low light, it feels like no contest.

The iPhone 12 Pro Max consistently took a better,

more detailed and less noisy photos than the Pixel Five

and Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra.

Look at how muddy the Pixel Five looks

in this sunset photo compared to the Pro Max.

Look how overprocessed the Note 20 looks in this comparison.

Apple has definitely moved ahead of the pack here.

The telephoto camera is less straightforward to talk about.

It is effectively the same sensor as the 12 Pro,

but with a longer 2.5x zoom and the less bright f/2.2 lens

instead of the two x f/2.0 lens on the regular 12 Pro.

So a longer zoom that can pick up less light.

It's a trade off, but I think it works out.

I really like having that tighter zoom

and I wanted to use it more,

but it performs slightly worse in lower light in the 12 Pro.

That said I think it's less the upper hand

compared to the Note 20 Ultra and Pixel Five.

Apple smart HDR 3 is really good this year,

with excellent noise reduction

and vibrant colors that are still accurate.

I'm really intrigued by Apple's new pro raw format

that offers the editing flexibility of raw images

with the processing of smart HDR, but then it's not out yet.

So we'll have to wait.

The benefits of the bigger sensor

are less noticeable in video.

And really they're only noticeable

if you're watching on a larger screen like a TV.

You'll notice there's QR codes in all these videos,

just scan those with your phone

and you can watch the full res files including Dolby Vision,

if you have an iPhone.

At night, you might see a little more detail and less noise

and shadows compared to the 12 Pro.

And there's the tiniest bit more detail in bright light,

but unless you're looking for it.

We already thought the 12 Pro was ahead of the pack

in terms of video,

and the 12 Pro Max is maybe a tiny bit better,

but the improvement is not nearly as dramatic as it is

in still photos.

Two things haven't changed,

I did a deep dive on Dolby Vision

in