iPhone 14 Pro Max - Long Term Review - Worth The Upgrade

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi everyone Aaron here for zollotech and lately I've been getting a lot of questions about the  iPhone 14 pro and 14 pro Max and to whether or not it's worth it whether that be from friends or  people online asking me questions and so it's been out a couple months and so I thought I'd sort of  try and answer the questions people have about it starting with the dynamic Island so this isn't a  follow-up review it's more of a is it worth it for you to upgrade based on what you have and based  on the new features and so the first thing is the dynamic Island like I said and people say what do  you think of it is it exciting is it something to be excited for if I upgrade and typically I  say that it's nice but after a few days of use it just kind of Fades away in the background now the  overall look of it is either polarizing to you you really don't like it or it's something that  you actually find that you do like better than the notch before but personally to me it sort  of just fades in the background and becomes a nice place for notifications I don't really find that I  interact with it much but it's not nice to maybe go into music hit swipe home while it's playing  and then see it go up to the dynamic Island and then see those sorts of interactions I think those  are really nice to have sort of up in the top letting you know what's going on with different  things going on in the OS other than that though it's not really a reason to run out and buy the  phone it sort of gets old and it's not something you pay attention to constantly or interact with  constantly it's more that it's just nice and convenient that it's there so I wouldn't buy  it for the dynamic Island but I found that it's just a really nice thing to have there it's very  apple-like where it's just sort of nice animations to give you subtle notifications and information  about what's going on on your phone now the next thing people ask me what about the display is it  something to be really excited about or is it great and I find that that's probably one of  the best things about this phone the display is incredibly bright and seeing it outside  with this sort of daylight it's one of the best things about it because it goes up to 2000 nits  of brightness it just makes it much easier to see if you're in a bright environment so if you're in  an area where it's regularly sunny and you're outside a lot it's going to make a difference  compared to last year though if that doesn't matter you're not outside you're usually using  it indoors at work or something else you really won't notice that difference everything else is  the same there with promotion the smoothness and everything else is the same as what we had last  time but the extra brightness definitely helps also with HDR footage if there's some brighter  HDR footage out there it looks great on this display and the always-on display is something  that you're either going to love and you've wanted forever or something that you won't care  about the one thing that's really nice with the addition of iOS 16.2 Apple has added the ability  to just turn off the wallpaper in the background altogether so it just gives you the time the clock  your widgets things like that and that's about it everything else just sort of Fades away now it is  nice to have an always on display with wallpaper I actually like that and I haven't really noticed a  battery difference having that on or off but I've been testing that out just to see what it's like  now as far as the battery life of this phone that's something that some people say is great  others don't it depends what phone you're actually coming from so if you're coming from an 11 Pro Max  that's where we've got really good battery life with iPhone you're going to see about  the same sort of battery life now technically we have better battery life depending on what  you're doing from the 13 Pro Max to the 14 pro Max however the battery is technically smaller  but with the new chipset being more efficient sort of makes up for that so if you're just  watching video that you've downloaded maybe you're on a plane and you've downloaded a bunch of video  you'll get a little bit extra battery life but in everyday tasks with the always on display on  and with just doing what you normally do on your phone I find I actually get less battery life it  will easily get me through the day I get through the day with about 50 of my battery life either  way so it will last me without a problem and it charges at the same rate as before so there's not  really a difference between the 13 Pro Max and 14 pro Max that way but I would say you'll probably  get a little bit less less battery life if you've got the always-on display turned on if not it'll  be about the same as the 13 Pro Max depending on what you're doing the other big upgrade this  year is with the cameras the camera jumps up to 48 megapixels on the main sensor with the main wide  camera and there's definitely more detail there so if you're shooting outside just like this the  camera looks great you'll see the photos behind me and what they look like there's incredible detail  there especially when you zoom way in if you want to capture that with Pro Raw photos you can fully  edit them and more however there's been some odd sort of things happening with the processing  where it sort of darkens things for some people especially indoors so I don't know that it's  necessarily a big jump up if you're going from a 13 Pro Max and you're not caring about Pro Raw  photos or 48 megapixel photos if you're just using the standard mode it will use 12 megapixel photos  anyway or sort of compress them down to that size so if you're upgrading for the camera just for  that unless you're going to edit I wouldn't say it makes much of a difference also when it comes to  video that's actually about the same except when you're using it for HDR I actually find the HDR  coloring to be a little bit worse for some reason I've tried to edit it some in post and on some of  my videos I've recorded it with it just doesn't look great to me and I had to really modify it  a lot to get the look I had last year with just straight out of the camera I don't know if this  is something they're going to upgrade later with the phone with updates but it's just something  I've noticed however the best part of this is the forward-facing camera in fact I'm recording from  it right now and if I turn on this camera and just snap a photo here you'll see that I'm recording  with the front-facing camera it's doing a great job I don't have an external microphone and you've  probably seen others record with it also I think that's a big big upgrade this year that's really  underrated they added autofocus improved the sensor and it just looks much better I can put  it on a tripod like I just showed you and hit record and not worry about it so unless there's  a ton of ambient noise where there's a little bit of construction going on behind to me there's some  birds overhead occasional planes other than that it really sort of eliminates that noise and of  course you can fix that later on also but that's probably the best part of the iPhone 14 pro or any  of the iPhone 14 lineup is that forward-facing camera it's much much better than before thanks  to autofocus so like I said it's just something that I've been using I actually used it in other  videos just put it in front of me and hit record instead of using a big Sony camera this seems to  work just fine and most people actually think the footage looks better when you're watching  it on something like YouTube now this year we get a spec bump to the a16 bionic just like  every year they bump that up one number and it still has six gigabytes of RAM for the average  user you're not going to notice any difference whatsoever regular tasks feel the same opening  the camera you might see a small difference when maybe you're editing a 48 megapixel raw photo in  the time it takes to process that or a night photo but with even exporting 4K video I've  shown in different comparisons there was about a second difference sometimes even half a second  difference so it just depends on what you're doing with the phone it seems to handle everything with  ease there is one exception though and that's with overall smoothness Apple this year added  upgraded silicon that actually handles the dynamic Island and different animations and it really sort  of Smooths things out when you're scrolling and doing things where you're swiping home so unless  it's a software issue where there's some odd bugs typically it's smooth and fast so for most people  I don't think you'll notice much of a difference using the a16 bionic and I tell most people it's  not really worth upgrading just for that unless you're coming from an older phone then you'll  notice a difference in fact my wife when she upgraded this year from the 12 Pro to the 14  pro she didn't notice a speed difference at all she noticed a difference with the display in the  cameras last time she upgraded from the iPhone 10 to the 12 Pro and immediately noticed how much  faster it was so this year it seems to be less and less of a speed change from year over year and  it's still decent but it's not really a reason to just run out and pick one up because your iPhone  13 Pro Max feels slow I don't think you'll see much of a difference there and so that's typically  what I tell people asking if they should upgrade to the 14 pro or 14 pro Max normally if the camera  matters to you most of all the forward-facing camera or the rear camera with 48 megapixel photos  then it's worth the upgrade if you're in outdoor environments that are bright all the time you'll  notice the difference there also anything else you probably won't see much of a change other than the  physical change of the dynamic Island everything else feels very very similar as the OS hasn't  changed a whole lot either and you have basically the same experience on the iPhone 13 Pro Max with  the exception of a couple different small features here and there with the camera otherwise it feels  very very similar so I don't know if it's worth it for everyone for a few people it's going to be  worth it but if you care about those 48 megapixel Raw photos and you use your phone for photography  the most well then it'll make a difference but again there's some odd processing from time to  time that you may need to adjust those photos a little more than you're used to other than that  it's great for video like I'm recording here as I showed you earlier and I definitely recommend  it if you're on an older phone or you can get a great deal as quite a few of my friends have  gotten good deals from their carriers recently where they're getting up to a thousand dollars  trade in from their previous phones so they're getting this for 100 or 200 then it's definitely  worth the upgrade so be sure to check the Local Deals in your area but again every few years  Apple fully redesigns this so you may want to wait but let me know what you're doing in the  comments below I'd love to hear from you there and of course I'll link this wallpaper in the  description like I normally do if you haven't subscribed already though please subscribe and  if you enjoyed the video please give it a like as always thanks for watching I'll see you next time\n"