Should you buy the iPhone 15 Pro?

**First Impressions: iPhone 15 Pro Max**

Your color and exposure works wonders, especially in high contrast scenarios. There were plenty of times when I was shooting over the weekend when there was harsh sunlight, especially on my face, where I needed to rain that down and prores log absolutely helped with that. Plus, if you plug in an external SSD or SD card over USB-C, you're able to shoot prores in 4K 60 as well for someone who shoots 30p like myself. This means that you can get 2x slow-mo combine that with log and the video looks so cinematic and good.

I've talked about the design in the action button USBC, the cameras now I want to talk about some of the long-term concerns that I have using the iPhone 15 Pro Max at least from what I could gather after using it for a weekend. The first big long-term concern I have with my iPhone 15 Pro Max is honestly the durability. Now I know that a lot of people will probably use a case with these devices, but I do have some questions about how well the titanium will hold up long term.

For the first couple of days of using a device, I don't use a case and I'm kind of regretting it because I did actually drop this onto concrete about a foot and a half off the ground which didn't really do serious damage. But I do have some pits and luckily no dents. You definitely have a scratch here and there from the drop but I think I especially have concerns about about the darker colors of these phones. It really is just a thin layer of whatever they use to color the metal, but otherwise when you drop it it just exposes the real color of the titanium which could stand out more than something like the natural titanium which has a lighter shade and can hide those kits a little better.

Of course, I can't really talk about durability without mentioning that Jerry rig everything video that's making its rounds all over the Internet and I think it really goes to show that the 15 Pro is honestly not as durable as we'd like to think it is. But maybe that's something for Apple to improve for the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro.

So, for now, don't deliberately try to bend your phone in half. It's not a z-flip, please don't do that. The battery life on the iPhone 15 Pro Max has honestly been fine for me especially considering how much raw stills and prores video I've been shooting. And with all of the USB devices attached to it.

However, something that I have more concerns about long term has to be with The Thermals and performance. I haven't done any benchmarks or gaming on this thing though I have been doing a lot of post-production for video and stills on this guy and it does get pretty toasty to be fair. Most of the time I've been using this has been in bright sun in the middle of hot days so not really the best way to get a gauge of how this will really perform in the real world.

Even though I was using it in the real world, a little more extreme than normal also compared to my 14 Pro Max this phone gets so hot to the point where it'll actually throttle down screen brightness way sooner than I think that 14 Pro Max would. Which is kind of unfortunate because that's what I loved about the 14 pro compared to the 13 which was really bad.

So, all of this to say I want to spend the next couple of weeks to actually properly test this out in my normal working conditions to see how well or not well it actually does. We'll just have to wait and see overall for my first impressions. Like this iPhone 15 Pro Max is it perfect not even close but I do think that the minor upgrades they made here do make for solid improvements. I like the cameras a lot, the action button is cool would love to see a bit more functionality with that.

And some flexibility also the USBC Port is a welcome addition finally especially for us Pros. But I do think that Apple can work on thermals and again want to see how this will perform in the long term once I get it under normal circumstances.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enafter months of seeing rumors and speculation I finally have my hands on the iPhone 15 Pro Max and what better time to make a video on it than on my vacation now in all seriousness I'm actually here in Japan to attend the Formula One Grand Prix over at Suzuka circuit which I figured since it coincided with the release of this phone that it would be the perfect backdrop to test it out this isn't going to be the most comprehensive Impressions video out there since there are plenty on YouTube that exist already and run the gamut pretty well rather I want to focus the conversation on stuff that stood out to me using this phone over the weekend the positives the negatives and some long-term concerns that I have with this device let's Jump Right In first and foremost I want to talk about the design it's not the biggest leap compared to the 14 pro from last year but I think it still looks striking especially in this natural titanium colorway personally I like it more than the other colors but probably more important than what your personal preference is is the fact that yes we actually have titanium surrounding the phone this year Apple claims that between this and the aluminum chassis inside that you overall get a lighter phone and compared to the 14 pro it actually does feel considerably lighter on paper the Delta is said to be around 0.7 grams which honestly doesn't seem like a whole lot when you're just looking at the numbers but trust me in the hands you definitely feel it the lighter center of gravity makes the phone easier to hold which is also helped by the fact that this year the frame is a little more rounded but I also like that it manages to keep a fairly Square profile which is a great balance between aesthetic but also Comfort but of course at the end of the day it looks like any other iPhone which is to say pretty safe but also tried and true and I still like this design a lot looking around the phone there are a few other changes that I want to talk about for example there's the action button which replaces the mute switch that has been on the iPhone forever until this point and I have mine set to open up the camera and also to uh take a shot which is really neat though I still haven't built the muscle memory to remember that it's a thing I don't have any doubts that the action button will be useful for me in the future but perhaps what I might do is play around with the shortcuts function to find something that I'll actually want to use on a regular basis but for now I just have it set to open up my camera but also the action button does have pretty natural placement for you where you'd expect a shutter button to be on say a point-and-shoot so that's kind of neat even though the volume buttons already acted as a shutter button on the other phone speaking of the shutter whenever I go to take a photo even though the phone is on silent the shutter sound still goes off and that's because I had to buy a Japanese Market iPhone 15 Pro Max the phone came out when I was in the country and I needed to do my coverage on it and so I did what I had to do and bought the phone here if you guys didn't already know Japan has privacy laws where smartphones have shutter sounds so that people know when you decide to take photos in the bathroom and places like that but the good thing about the iPhone at least as far as what I've read and I'll certainly find out when I get back home is that for the past couple of iPhones Apple has actually made it so that if you put an international SIM and your phone isn't in Japan you can actually take photos silently when your phone is set to silent what is however my favorite thing about buying a Japanese model phone is that this one has a SIM card slot since the iPhone 14 Apple has completely done away with SIM card slots on us model phones and completely relying on esim for cellular connectivity it's been fine for me because I've been using esim for years but when I travel abroad it's still nice to have the option of swapping out physical SIM cards and it's not like there's much of a compromise here either I can still put multiple e-sims as well as any SIM card I want into the phone and still dual wield two services at a time regardless of which one I'm using so in this sense I get the best of both worlds looking at the bottom of this iPhone 15 Pro Max and you will see the biggest change by far this year and that is the switch to USB type-c this has been a long time coming for us iPhone users not only will we get to use the same cable that's on every other device which should make our everyday carries a lot more simple but also for those of us that use the pro model iPhones to do professional things like take a lot of photos and shoot a lot of video for Work having USB 3.1 Gen 2 with 10 gigabit transfer speeds will make offloading media a cinch in fact when I was shooting a lot of prores video and Raw photos at Suzuka circuit over the F1 weekend it was pretty handy to plug in my Samsung external SSD offload like 90 gigs worth of stuff and have it be done in less than 10 minutes absolutely essential especially considering the fact that I had to buy a 256 gig iPhone 15 Pro Max which is not nearly enough storage to do all the things that I want to do but with an external drive the possibilities are now endless even for my tiny storage iPhone also as a side note Apple pretty much lets you do anything with this USBC Port you can plug in a four port hub for example and say Plug Power into one port plug in your USB audio from like my DJI microphone into another and also plug in the SSD and it'll all work totally fine I kind of just assumed that the port would be pretty limited on how much you could do simultaneously with it but it doesn't seem like there's a limit apart from bandwidth but I certainly haven't hit that yet so kudos to Apple for actually doing this USBC thing right alright so slight scene change I'm back here in the studio editing the iPhone video as we speak and I think it's a perfect opportunity to talk about the cameras now that I've spent a little more time taking a look at the photos and videos that I shot if we're talking about Stills compared to last year I honestly can't really notice that much of a difference to my eye but all of this to say that the photos still look great especially while shooting with that main 48 megapixel sensor and even better when shooting raw probably the biggest change this year comes with the iPhone 15 Pro Max with its 5x telephoto lens which is roughly equivalent to 120 millimeters in focal length this was really nice while spectating the F1 race since I wasn't super close to the track but was still able to get reasonably tight shots now it's not as Extreme as something like the 10x lens that you get on the s23 ultra but I think where the 15 Pro Max shines compared to that one is with its aperture what do you get with the iPhone is shallower depth of field and better low light performance but where you really see the benefits of all of these lenses is in video especially with the addition of prores lock which means not only do you have the high quality video recording that comes with prores but you also have a flat picture profile which is nice for maximizing your dynamic range especially when you start color grading in applications like Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve having more control over your color and exposure works wonders especially in high contrast scenarios there were plenty of times when I was shooting over the weekend when there was harsh sunlight especially on my face where I needed to rain that down and prores log absolutely helped with that plus if you plug in an external SSD or SD card over USBC you're able to shoot prores in 4k 60 as well for someone that shoots 30p like myself this means that you can get 2x slow-mo combine that with log and the video looks so cinematic and good okay so I've talked about the design in the action button USBC the cameras now I want to talk about some of the long-term concerns that I have using the iPhone 15 Pro Max at least from what I could gather after using it for a weekend the first big long-term concern I have with my iPhone 15 Pro Max is honestly the durability now I know that a lot of people will probably use a case with these devices but I do have some questions about how well the titanium will hold up long term for the first couple of days of using a device I don't use a case and I'm kind of regretting that because I did actually drop this onto concrete about a foot and a half off the ground which didn't really do serious damage but I do have some pits and luckily no dents but you definitely have a scratch here and there from the drop but I think I especially have concerns about about the darker colors of these phones it really is just a thin layer of whatever they use to color the metal but otherwise when you drop it it just exposes the real color of the titanium which could stand out more than something like the natural titanium which has a lighter shade and can hide those kits a little better of course I can't really talk about durability without mentioning that Jerry rig everything video that's making its rounds all over the Internet and I think it really goes to show that the 15 Pro is honestly not as durable as we'd like to think it is but maybe that's something for Apple to improve for the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro so for now don't deliberately try to bend your phone in half it's not a z-flip please don't do that the battery life on the iPhone 15 Pro Max has honestly been fine for me especially considering how much raw Stills and prores video I've been shooting and with all of the USB devices attached to it but something that I have more concerns about long term has to be with The Thermals and performance I haven't done any benchmarks or gaming on this thing though I have been doing a lot of post-production for video and stills on this guy and it does get pretty toasty to be fair most of the time I've been using this has been in bright sun in the middle of hot days so not really the best way to get a gauge of how this will really perform in the real world even though I was using it in the real world a little more extreme than normal also compared to my 14 pro Max this phone gets so hot to the point where it'll actually Throttle Down screen brightness way sooner than I think that 14 pro Max would which is kind of unfortunate because that's what I loved about the 14 pro compared to the 13 that came before it which was really bad so all of this to say I want to spend the next couple of weeks to actually properly test this out in my normal working conditions to see how well or not well it actually does we'll just have to wait and see overall for my first impressions I like this iPhone 15 Pro Max is it perfect not even close but I do think that the minor upgrades they made here do make for solid improvements I like the cameras a lot the action button is cool would love to see a bit more functionality with that and some flexibility also the USBC Port is a welcome addition finally especially for us Pros but I do think that Apple can work with thermals and I again want to see how this will perform in the long term once I get it under normal circumstances but let me know what do you think about the iPhone 15 pro and pro Max in the comments below otherwise thanks for watching this video on denki channel right as all of the horns come inafter months of seeing rumors and speculation I finally have my hands on the iPhone 15 Pro Max and what better time to make a video on it than on my vacation now in all seriousness I'm actually here in Japan to attend the Formula One Grand Prix over at Suzuka circuit which I figured since it coincided with the release of this phone that it would be the perfect backdrop to test it out this isn't going to be the most comprehensive Impressions video out there since there are plenty on YouTube that exist already and run the gamut pretty well rather I want to focus the conversation on stuff that stood out to me using this phone over the weekend the positives the negatives and some long-term concerns that I have with this device let's Jump Right In first and foremost I want to talk about the design it's not the biggest leap compared to the 14 pro from last year but I think it still looks striking especially in this natural titanium colorway personally I like it more than the other colors but probably more important than what your personal preference is is the fact that yes we actually have titanium surrounding the phone this year Apple claims that between this and the aluminum chassis inside that you overall get a lighter phone and compared to the 14 pro it actually does feel considerably lighter on paper the Delta is said to be around 0.7 grams which honestly doesn't seem like a whole lot when you're just looking at the numbers but trust me in the hands you definitely feel it the lighter center of gravity makes the phone easier to hold which is also helped by the fact that this year the frame is a little more rounded but I also like that it manages to keep a fairly Square profile which is a great balance between aesthetic but also Comfort but of course at the end of the day it looks like any other iPhone which is to say pretty safe but also tried and true and I still like this design a lot looking around the phone there are a few other changes that I want to talk about for example there's the action button which replaces the mute switch that has been on the iPhone forever until this point and I have mine set to open up the camera and also to uh take a shot which is really neat though I still haven't built the muscle memory to remember that it's a thing I don't have any doubts that the action button will be useful for me in the future but perhaps what I might do is play around with the shortcuts function to find something that I'll actually want to use on a regular basis but for now I just have it set to open up my camera but also the action button does have pretty natural placement for you where you'd expect a shutter button to be on say a point-and-shoot so that's kind of neat even though the volume buttons already acted as a shutter button on the other phone speaking of the shutter whenever I go to take a photo even though the phone is on silent the shutter sound still goes off and that's because I had to buy a Japanese Market iPhone 15 Pro Max the phone came out when I was in the country and I needed to do my coverage on it and so I did what I had to do and bought the phone here if you guys didn't already know Japan has privacy laws where smartphones have shutter sounds so that people know when you decide to take photos in the bathroom and places like that but the good thing about the iPhone at least as far as what I've read and I'll certainly find out when I get back home is that for the past couple of iPhones Apple has actually made it so that if you put an international SIM and your phone isn't in Japan you can actually take photos silently when your phone is set to silent what is however my favorite thing about buying a Japanese model phone is that this one has a SIM card slot since the iPhone 14 Apple has completely done away with SIM card slots on us model phones and completely relying on esim for cellular connectivity it's been fine for me because I've been using esim for years but when I travel abroad it's still nice to have the option of swapping out physical SIM cards and it's not like there's much of a compromise here either I can still put multiple e-sims as well as any SIM card I want into the phone and still dual wield two services at a time regardless of which one I'm using so in this sense I get the best of both worlds looking at the bottom of this iPhone 15 Pro Max and you will see the biggest change by far this year and that is the switch to USB type-c this has been a long time coming for us iPhone users not only will we get to use the same cable that's on every other device which should make our everyday carries a lot more simple but also for those of us that use the pro model iPhones to do professional things like take a lot of photos and shoot a lot of video for Work having USB 3.1 Gen 2 with 10 gigabit transfer speeds will make offloading media a cinch in fact when I was shooting a lot of prores video and Raw photos at Suzuka circuit over the F1 weekend it was pretty handy to plug in my Samsung external SSD offload like 90 gigs worth of stuff and have it be done in less than 10 minutes absolutely essential especially considering the fact that I had to buy a 256 gig iPhone 15 Pro Max which is not nearly enough storage to do all the things that I want to do but with an external drive the possibilities are now endless even for my tiny storage iPhone also as a side note Apple pretty much lets you do anything with this USBC Port you can plug in a four port hub for example and say Plug Power into one port plug in your USB audio from like my DJI microphone into another and also plug in the SSD and it'll all work totally fine I kind of just assumed that the port would be pretty limited on how much you could do simultaneously with it but it doesn't seem like there's a limit apart from bandwidth but I certainly haven't hit that yet so kudos to Apple for actually doing this USBC thing right alright so slight scene change I'm back here in the studio editing the iPhone video as we speak and I think it's a perfect opportunity to talk about the cameras now that I've spent a little more time taking a look at the photos and videos that I shot if we're talking about Stills compared to last year I honestly can't really notice that much of a difference to my eye but all of this to say that the photos still look great especially while shooting with that main 48 megapixel sensor and even better when shooting raw probably the biggest change this year comes with the iPhone 15 Pro Max with its 5x telephoto lens which is roughly equivalent to 120 millimeters in focal length this was really nice while spectating the F1 race since I wasn't super close to the track but was still able to get reasonably tight shots now it's not as Extreme as something like the 10x lens that you get on the s23 ultra but I think where the 15 Pro Max shines compared to that one is with its aperture what do you get with the iPhone is shallower depth of field and better low light performance but where you really see the benefits of all of these lenses is in video especially with the addition of prores lock which means not only do you have the high quality video recording that comes with prores but you also have a flat picture profile which is nice for maximizing your dynamic range especially when you start color grading in applications like Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve having more control over your color and exposure works wonders especially in high contrast scenarios there were plenty of times when I was shooting over the weekend when there was harsh sunlight especially on my face where I needed to rain that down and prores log absolutely helped with that plus if you plug in an external SSD or SD card over USBC you're able to shoot prores in 4k 60 as well for someone that shoots 30p like myself this means that you can get 2x slow-mo combine that with log and the video looks so cinematic and good okay so I've talked about the design in the action button USBC the cameras now I want to talk about some of the long-term concerns that I have using the iPhone 15 Pro Max at least from what I could gather after using it for a weekend the first big long-term concern I have with my iPhone 15 Pro Max is honestly the durability now I know that a lot of people will probably use a case with these devices but I do have some questions about how well the titanium will hold up long term for the first couple of days of using a device I don't use a case and I'm kind of regretting that because I did actually drop this onto concrete about a foot and a half off the ground which didn't really do serious damage but I do have some pits and luckily no dents but you definitely have a scratch here and there from the drop but I think I especially have concerns about about the darker colors of these phones it really is just a thin layer of whatever they use to color the metal but otherwise when you drop it it just exposes the real color of the titanium which could stand out more than something like the natural titanium which has a lighter shade and can hide those kits a little better of course I can't really talk about durability without mentioning that Jerry rig everything video that's making its rounds all over the Internet and I think it really goes to show that the 15 Pro is honestly not as durable as we'd like to think it is but maybe that's something for Apple to improve for the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro so for now don't deliberately try to bend your phone in half it's not a z-flip please don't do that the battery life on the iPhone 15 Pro Max has honestly been fine for me especially considering how much raw Stills and prores video I've been shooting and with all of the USB devices attached to it but something that I have more concerns about long term has to be with The Thermals and performance I haven't done any benchmarks or gaming on this thing though I have been doing a lot of post-production for video and stills on this guy and it does get pretty toasty to be fair most of the time I've been using this has been in bright sun in the middle of hot days so not really the best way to get a gauge of how this will really perform in the real world even though I was using it in the real world a little more extreme than normal also compared to my 14 pro Max this phone gets so hot to the point where it'll actually Throttle Down screen brightness way sooner than I think that 14 pro Max would which is kind of unfortunate because that's what I loved about the 14 pro compared to the 13 that came before it which was really bad so all of this to say I want to spend the next couple of weeks to actually properly test this out in my normal working conditions to see how well or not well it actually does we'll just have to wait and see overall for my first impressions I like this iPhone 15 Pro Max is it perfect not even close but I do think that the minor upgrades they made here do make for solid improvements I like the cameras a lot the action button is cool would love to see a bit more functionality with that and some flexibility also the USBC Port is a welcome addition finally especially for us Pros but I do think that Apple can work with thermals and I again want to see how this will perform in the long term once I get it under normal circumstances but let me know what do you think about the iPhone 15 pro and pro Max in the comments below otherwise thanks for watching this video on denki channel right as all of the horns come in