Apple iPhone 18 Pro Max review: It’s what’s on the inside that counts - Mashable

This is an unusual moment for Apple's iPhone Pro. Last year’s model was a big redesign; this year’s is all about refinement. At the same time, the company launched its first-ever foldable, the iPhone Duo. While it doesn’t have all the top features of the Pro models, the Duo is, by virtue of its massive inner display and the novelty of it all, the more intriguing model.

What can the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max do, then, to grab your attention? They don’t look very different, and the new phones lack the types of flashy upgrades that you can point to as must-haves in 2026. Inside, however, the refinement has been substantial. But whether you need the more expensive iPhone 18 Pro Max very much depends on the type of user you are.

Not everyone should upgrade their phone this year.

Here are the key specs for the iPhone 18 Pro Max:

Display: 6.9-inch, Super Retina XDR display with 120Hz refresh rate / 6.3 inches for the iPhone 18 Pro

Design: Aluminum unibody with Ceramic Shield 2 on the front and Ceramic Shield on the back

Rear cameras: 48 megapixel triple rear camera array with 8x optical-quality zoom (main camera has variable aperture)

Front camera: 18-megapixel selfie camera

Processor: A20 Pro chip (6-core CPU, 7-core GPU, and dual 16-core Neural Engine)

Storage: 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB

Battery life: Up to 45 hours of video playback (36 hours for the iPhone 18 Pro)

Fast charging: Up to 50 percent of charge in 15 minutes with a 60W adapter

Water and dust resistance: IP68 rating

Special features: Improved vapor chamber cooling system, spatial reframing for photos

Starting with the design, the new Pro-level iPhones are pretty much the same as the 17 Pro. This year you can choose from four colors — black, silver, glacier blue, and burgundy, with silver being a carry-over from last year — and the colors are slightly more uniform on the back. The Dynamic Island is also smaller than before. Oh, and the new model is quite a bit heavier than the last one; we’ll go into reasons for that later.

In a briefing following the launch, Apple showed us just how much work went into reducing the size of the Dynamic Island. The company hid the infrared sensor underneath the display, roughly halving the number of pixels in that area to let the light in, but arranging them in a different way. The image quality is not as good in that little area, but as Apple’s engineers showed us, the difference is essentially imperceptible to the human eye.

In other words, Apple is still working hard to improve its phones, but those improvements don’t always show up very dramatically in the final product. There are physical limitations on just how much tech you can cram into a device that still fits in your pockets and hands. Incremental progress, folks.

The new colors are nice. Apple sent me the iPhone 18 Pro Max in Burgundy and the 18 Pro in Glacier. Burgundy is beautiful, but not as flashy as last year’s cosmic orange. Glacier, on the other hand, is not as subdued as Apple’s colors typically are; it’s an icy blue that really shines through, even in low light, and it’s my favorite color in this lineup.

If you want to customize your new phone to your liking, there are already plenty of iPhone 18 Pro cases, not to mention accessories like wallets, grips, and wrist straps. Apple itself launched six new TechWoven cases, six new silicone cases, and new straps and MagSafe wallets for the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max. So, everyone should be able to find something they like.

For my review, I've focused my testing on the iPhone 18 Pro Max due to time limits (and the fact that the 18 Pro is identical in most respects). Inside, both smartphones have a new heart, Apple’s A20 Pro chip, which makes them blazing fast. Nothing you’ll notice browsing the web or even playing games, mind you, but the 16-core Neural Engine that powers AI tasks has been doubled, and that makes AI tasks a lot faster — in theory.

In practice, it depends on the task. I asked the Playground to create an image of a “futuristic city with a river running through it" and hit the "Go" button at the same time on my iPhone 17 Pro Max and 18 Pro Max. Both phones completed the task in exactly the same time. Visual Intelligence, on the other hand, was a little faster on the newer phone.

Another big internal change: Thanks to Apple’s new cooling system, which includes a massive vapor chamber that covers nearly the entirety of the phone, the phone is noticeably cooler than before. I tested this out by playing a few games of PUBG: Battlegrounds on the highest settings for a full hour. The phone barely got warm.

What you will notice is the battery life, and it’s the one new thing most users will feel in daily use. My testing confirms that Apple has significantly improved the battery, now offering up to 43 hours of video playback, up from 37 on the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Apple has rearranged the phone’s internals to put in a massive new battery. I suspect this is the main reason the phone now weighs 249 grams, up from 231 on the 17 Pro Max.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max already delivered a significant leap in battery life compared to its predecessor, making the iPhone 18 Pro Max even more impressive. We’re reaching the point at which battery life doesn’t matter that much; chargers are everywhere, and Apple’s phones have made leaps and bounds in this regard over the past couple of years. But it’s still a big deal, especially for video lovers, photographers/videographers, and creators.

Simply put, with the iPhone 18 Pro Max, you don’t have to worry about battery life at all. That one-hour session of PUBG? It only took my battery from 62 percent to 53 percent.

The camera improvements mostly have to do with the main, wide camera, which has a new sensor and, for the first time on an iPhone, a physical variable aperture. On top of that, iOS 27 brings crucial new photography and videography tools. New software features include the Pro controls in the camera app and new cinematic mode effects for video. These features are geared more toward photographers and video creators, but new AI photo editing tools like spatial reframing and picture clean-up will appeal to everyone, I think.

The variable aperture has been made possible by adding six hair-thin blades that open and close to let more or less light into the camera sensor. When you’re shooting in the dark, you want more light in the sensor, but when it’s broad daylight, you’ll get a better result with a higher aperture, meaning less light is hitting the sensor.

This happens automatically, but you can also adjust it manually through one of Apple’s new Pro controls, available if you tap the dot grid icon in the lower right portion of the Camera app (you can only use this for the main camera, though). Other new features, such as manual white balance, focus, and shutter speed settings, used to be available only through third-party camera software; now it’s all there in the Camera app.

Even if you're not a pro, the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max take excellent photographs:

I welcome the ability to set the white balance manually; automatic white balance often gets it wrong (not just on the iPhone; on standalone cameras too), resulting in photos that look too cold or too warm. The aperture setting can be used to create certain cool effects, but it’s not something I’ll use regularly, and the same goes for most of the other new settings.

It’s a recurring theme in Apple’s “Pro” devices, be it Macs, iPads or iPhones: They truly are aimed at pros. That doesn’t mean the regular user won't benefit, but I do bet that the majority of people will try out the manual aperture setting once and then leave it on auto. (You can always hold out for the new iPhone 18 base model, which we expect to arrive in early 2027.)

The most important part of Apple’s new main iPhone camera is that it is an entirely new system. The sensor is new, and the maximum aperture now goes to f/1.48 (the iPhone 17 Pro models had an f/1.78 aperture), which, in theory, improves low-light performance. The new A20 Pro chip should also help with image and color quality.

It’s definitely true that the iPhone 18 Pro Max cameras take excellent nighttime and low-light photographs, but it’s not immediately apparent unless you dig in. In my camera testing, I was often getting better results on my iPhone 17 Pro Max. But that’s because its Night Mode automatically fired for 3 seconds, whereas the 18 Pro Max only needed 1 second, precisely because the sensor was getting more light. When I manually disabled Night Mode, the results were clearly better on the iPhone 18 Pro Max, with far more details and an overall sharper photo with less noise.

That’s a problem modern smartphone manufacturers are facing; the tricks they’ve been using to improve phone photography can overcome the constraints of the physical lens and sensor. Putting a new lens and sensor in might not mean you’ll get better photos, at least not at first glance. But make no mistake, the iPhone 18 Pro Max does have a better main camera.

The telephoto camera and the ultra-wide camera, as well as the 18MP Center Stage selfie camera, produced very similar photos as the ones I took with last year’s models, however. Apple does say all of the cameras' capabilities have been enhanced through software improvements, but the differences are small.

Apple also launched a feature called Apple Reference Image, and it can be used to verify whether a photo is authentic, as it stores only the data that was captured by the camera sensor at the pixel level, at the moment of capture. You have to manually turn it on in the Camera Settings, as it’s off by default; once it’s on, you can decide to share the reference image together with the regular image to prove your work isn't AI-generated.

I presume this will mostly benefit journalists and media outlets, who will be able to verify whether a photo has actually been taken by someone’s camera or if it’s been visually altered. In the era of omnipresent AI slop, it’s the type of feature that could soon become a must-have.

There are other improvements, though they really are tiny. The Dynamic Island, for example, can now support three live activities at the same time. Have a workout timer on while waiting for Uber Eats and your favorite team is playing? Great, you can get info on all of those at a glance.

Wired charging is a little faster, too. You can now get up to 50 percent charge in 15 minutes (it was 20 minutes on last year’s model) using a 60W-capable adapter.

Finally, iOS 27 brings a whole new Siri AI experience and various Apple Intelligence upgrades. Mashable will have more to say about Siri AI once we've done a bit more testing, and we didn't want to wait to get readers our initial iPhone 18 Pro review.

The new iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max start at $1,199 and $1,299, respectively, a $100 price hike over last year’s smartphones. They look and feel largely the same, and while they do bring a few big improvements, including better camera, cooling, and battery life, they don't make this phone a necessary upgrade for folks who already have the 17 Pro. If you have an even older model, the 18 Pro will be a massive upgrade, especially when it comes to battery life.

If you’re a photographer, videographer, creator, or simply an advanced user who runs through battery life at twice the speed of mere mortals, then the new iPhones are pretty amazing, and you should get them despite the higher price.

With the iPhone Duo being held until October, a lot of people will wonder whether they should hold out for that model. I’ve only spent a very short time with the Duo (full review pending), but I can already tell you it’s a completely different beast. It’s almost twice the price, has a less powerful camera, but comes with that gorgeous foldable display. It’s a tough call at this point; if you’re not sure, maybe wait until you can actually try the Duo in person.