Let's see if that's actually the case. So if I just pick a random piece of tech up here and maybe we'll just take a couple of photos. So with this particular example of a very close-up subject, you can see a difference. Specifically if you look at the lights behind the PS5, they're a little bit more bokeh'd out, and that looks a little more like a real portrait mode, but of course this is the standard photo.

Now while the Pro Max does at least on paper have better stabilization with the sensor-shift, it actually isn't a big difference. In fact, it's actually designed to be essentially the same level of stabilization as what you get on the Mini phone. Now the telephoto is a pretty big difference. So if I take a normal shot on the Pro Max and I take a telephoto, very large difference and look, I'm all for having some kind of telephoto on a phone it makes a difference, but ultimately does it make enough of a difference for me to go with a much larger phone and to give up the much cheaper price tag of the Mini. No, it doesn't.

- It does for me Austin.

- Well look, you can use the Pro Max. It's a free country and it's a free world.

- Is the phone free?

- No.

- Oh.

So the iPhone 12 Mini has the same Apple A14 Bionic chip as its bigger brothers, the 12, the 12 Pro, the 12 Pro Max, but there's more to it than just pure specs. First of all, this does actually have more memory six gigs of RAM versus four, but importantly I wanna see how the performance lines up.

So let's start out by running a quick little Geekbench and just get a little bit of a baseline on what both of these phones are capable of. Interesting, so the Pro Max actually has a slight lead in Geekbench. Now mind you this is just a single run but at least on the multi-core side we see a little bit more performance on the Pro Max.

So this is the 3DMark Wild Life test. Now this is simulating a very high-end graphically demanding game running on both the Mini as well as the Max. What do we got? What do we got? 41 versus 39. Yeah, see, there we go. The Pro Max pulls out a slight lead as well.

Oh wow. In one minute, the Mini lost 2% of its battery. (laughing) Oh boy. Alright. I think we gotta run the 20-minute test and see how these phones hold up. So look at the thermal image while we're running this 20-minute long stress test. It's pretty clear that the iPhone Mini is much warmer.

So even though the Pro Max has a hotspot on the top, the entire back of the Mini is I would say pretty toasty but the real test is going to be what the performance of the phones look like. Alright, the benchmark is, 45 versus 91. Whaaat? Huh? Huh?

The max scores of both phones pretty much identical but the difference is what 18 or 17 minutes in the Mini lost half its performance but then it came back up. I don't think I would put too much thought into that, that seems like a really weird edge case.

Absolutely would yeah. I'll say the Mini definitely ran warmer but if you take that weird anomaly out, I actually think that the Pro Max and the Mini performed very similarly. I mean, you look at the general loops, I mean, they were very similar. Both phones start to throttle after a couple of runs but they don't throttle that much.

I'm actually gonna say that this is a win for the Mini, not in so much that it actually outperforms the Pro Max but it gives you essentially the same performance in a chassis which is much smaller, that actually I will say is pretty impressive. So who should buy the iPhone 12 Mini? I think at this point, I pretty well established.

This is the phone for me right? Am I gonna toss the Z Flip in the garbage? Absolutely not. But as far as an iPhone and all the benefits of using an iPhone, the 12 Mini checks all the boxes for me with the only exception being battery life.

But that's something I can deal with especially because I'm in a very fortunate position where I do go back and forth between the two devices. But if you want a compact flagship there is simply nothing that touches the iPhone 12 Mini.

Thank you very much for watching. Please subscribe to the channel for more content because believe me when I say, we have some big, big videos coming up that I will watch on my small, small iPhone.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- This is the iPhone 12 Miniand it is the iPhone of my dreams.Now is it for you?Honestly, probably not.But I think that thereare a significant amountof people out there who'vebeen waiting for this phonefor a very long time, myself included.So I will give Apple props.This is the mostcomprehensive line of iPhonesthey have ever created.There's the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro,if you're a normal person you wanta roughly normal sized phone.You can go up to the Pro Maxif you want a big, big chungus.(clears throat)And then you have thisguy, the iPhone 12 Mini.Now, if I put this alongsidesomething like an iPhone 5Sor even a current SE you'll seethe size difference is real.I mean, I just hold thisfor five seconds, right?I've just pulled it out of the boxand I can already telljust how nice it is to use.The thing is smartphones thesedays have gotten enormous.That's a big reason whyI use something likethis Samsung Galaxy Z Flip.Fits nicely in my pocket,of course it's got the folding thingwhich is admittedly agimmick I really like.But the thing about the Miniis that it doesn't need a folding gimmickor anything like that.This is a full flagshipand a smaller form factorand that's just simply, simply somethingthat we haven't seen in a long time.I'm stumbling over my own wordsbecause I'm so excited forthe new Mini phone in my life.Something else I appreciateabout the iPhone 12 Miniis the lack of compromises.So this has been something that is rumoredfor almost the entire year nowbut the main thing that kept mefrom making a decisionearlier were the specsand specifically the trade-offs, right?So generally speaking for a Mini phone,you have to lose features right?So whether you lose 5Gor high refresh rateor whatever the case is,generally speaking, thissmaller device lacks someof the high end features that you expect.Thankfully, that's not really the casewith the iPhone 12 Mini.So yes, it does lack ahigher refresh rate displaybut that is shared with theentire iPhone 12 lineup.They all run at 60 Hertzand while yes I would haveloved to see something higher.It's not only trade-off you haveto make with the smallerphone, same thing with 5G.Now I will absolutely saythat 5G is not a reasonfor you to upgrade to a new phone right?And actually I do thinkthat the 5G hype behindthese new iPhones is a littlebit overstated especiallybecause it's not really that much betterfor the vast majorityof people at the moment.That being said, I will certainly take 5Gover not having 5G,and the fact is that the iPhone 12 Miniat least here in the United States,does support not only Sub-65G but also millimeter wave.Now am I going to use thosecrazy fast speeds all the time?Probably not but I wouldcertainly rather have thoseand the fact that it's sayssuch a small phone is nice.Same thing goes with the screenunlike the iPhone XR and the iPhone 11,the iPhone 12 Mini hasa much higher resolution1080p OLED display.Now yes that does mean that the notchlooks a little bit large,so it's pretty much exactlythe same on the other phones,you therefore lose a littlebit more screen real estateon the top of the device.But that is a trade-off I am happy to maketo have a high quality screen.Same thing goes for the cameras.We'll play around with thosea little bit more laterbut you've got the exact samecameras from the iPhone 12and therefore very similarcameras to the iPhone 12 Proand not too far off of that 12 Pro Max.Again, you're getting the smaller phonewithout the sacrifice.Now there are some sacrificesyou do need to make.Screen real estate isabsolutely one of them.This is a much smallerdisplay and because of thatwhile it certainly givesyou more screen real estatethan something like aniPhone SE for example,it's still not going to be as nicefor watching video orsomething as the Pro Max.But that being said, I don't care,that's the whole end ofmy point. I don't care.You might care but for me,I'm totally happy watching(chuckles)on a smaller screen.So one of the main concerns I have goinginto my experience with theiPhone 12 Mini, is battery life.This just simply has a smaller batteryand all those greatbenefits of being a flagshipwith the high-end A14 processor and cameraand all that kind of stuff is great,but you also have a smallerbattery to power it at all.So, we'll see how that goesthat would be one of my main concernsand yes, it supports MagSafe chargingat slightly slowerspeeds, but I don't care.You won't notice. It's totally fine.Some of the big differencesbetween the Miniand it's much bigger brother the Pro Maxis on the camera side.So while they both sharethe exact same ultra widethey have very different main sensorsand of course the Pro Max does havethat 2.5 times telephoto.Now, in theory you shouldsee much better resultson this Pro Max right?Not only do you have a larger sensorbut you also have thatnice wide aperture thereand generally speaking that meansthat you get better low light performance,and you also get a little bit moreof that natural depth of field.Well let's see if that'sactually the case.So if I just pick somerandom piece of tech up hereand maybe we'll justtake a couple of photos.So with this particular exampleof a very close up subject,you can see a difference.So specifically if youlook at the lights behindthe PS5, they're a littlebit more bokeh'd out,and that looks a little morelike a real portrait modebut of course this is the standard photo.Now while the Pro Maxdoes at least on paperhave better stabilizationwith the sensor-shift.It actually isn't a big difference.In fact it's actuallydesigned to be essentiallythe same level of stabilizationas what you get on the Mini phone.Now the telephoto is apretty big difference.So if I take a normal shot on the Pro Maxand I take a telephoto,very large difference and look,I'm all for having somekind of telephoto on a phoneit makes a difference,but ultimately does itmake enoughof a difference for me togo with a much larger phoneand to give up the muchcheaper price tag of the Mini.No, it doesn't.- It does for me Austin.- Well look, you can use the Pro Max.It's a free country and it's a free world.- Is the phone free?- No.- Oh.- So the iPhone 12 Mini hasthe same Apple A14 Bionic chipas its bigger brothers, the12, the 12 Pro, the 12 Pro Max,but there's more to itthan just pure specs.First of all, this doesactually have more memorysix gigs of ram versus four,but importantly I wanna seehow the performance lines up.So let's start out by runninga quick little Geekbenchand just get a little bit of a baselineon what both of thesephones are capable of.Interesting so the Pro Max actually hasa slight lead in Geekbench.Now mind you this is just a single runbut at least on the multi-core sidewe see a little bit moreperformance on the Pro Max.So this is the 3DMark Wild Life test.Now this is simulating a very high-endgraphically demanding gamerunning on both theMini as well as the Max.What do we got?What do we got?41 versus 39. Yeah see, there we go.The Pro Max pulls outa slight lead as well.Oh wow.In one minute, the Minilost 2% of its battery.(laughing) Oh boy. Alright.I think we gotta run the 20-minute testand see how these phones hold up.So look at the thermal imagewhile we're running this20 minute long stress test.It's pretty clear that theiPhone Mini is much warmer.So even though the Pro Maxhas a hotspot on the topthe entire back of the Miniis I would say pretty toastybut the real test is goingto be what the performanceof the phones look like.Alright, the benchmark is, 45 versus 91.Whaaaat? Huh? Huh?The max scores of bothphones pretty much identicalbut the difference iswhat 18 or 17 minutes inthe Mini lost half its performancebut then it came back up.I don't think I would puttoo much thought into that,that seems like a really weird edge case.- I feel like you'd almost haveto run it one more time to figure it out.- Absolutely would yeah.I'll say the Mini definitely ran warmerbut if you take that weird anomaly out,I actually think that the Pro Maxand the Mini performed very similarly.I mean, you look at the general loops,I mean, they were very similar.Both phones start to throttleafter a couple of runsbut they don't throttle that much.I'm actually gonna say thatthis is a win for the Mini,not in so much that it actuallyoutperforms the Pro Maxbut it gives you essentiallythe same performancein a chassis which is much smaller,that actually I will sayis pretty impressive.So who should buy the iPhone 12 Mini?I think at this point, Ipretty well established.This is the phone for me right?Am I gonna toss the Z Flip in the garbage?Absolutely not.But as far as an iPhoneand all the benefitsof using an iPhone,the 12 Mini checks all the boxes for mewith the only exceptionbeing battery life.But that's something Ican deal with especiallybecause I'm in a very fortunate positionwhere I do go back and forthbetween the two devices.But if you want a compact flagshipthere is simply nothing thattouches the iPhone 12 Mini.Thank you very much for watching.Please subscribe to thechannel for more contentbecause believe me when I say,we have some big, big videos coming upthat I will watch onmy small, small iPhone.(upbeat music)