iPhone 17 Pro Max vs iPhone 16 Pro Max - Which Is Best?

The iPhone 17 Pro Max offers significant upgrades over the 16 Pro Max, including enhanced durability, a larger battery with faster charging, a brighter display with improved eye comfort features, a more powerful processor, and more versatile cameras, making it a compelling upgrade.

• iPhone 17 Pro Max offers enhanced durability, better heat dissipation, and improved ergonomics.

• Significant battery life and charging speed upgrades are present in the 17 Pro Max.

• Display improvements include anti-reflective coating, higher brightness, and eye-friendly PWM smoothing.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max introduces substantial improvements over its predecessor, the 16 Pro Max, featuring a redesigned aluminum unibody that enhances heat dissipation and durability, a larger battery with significantly faster charging speeds, and a display that is brighter and incorporates PWM smoothing for reduced eye strain. Performance is also markedly better, thanks to a faster processor and GPU, while camera capabilities are expanded with an 18-megapixel front camera offering dual capture and a rear system with three 48-megapixel lenses, supporting advanced video formats like ProRes RAW.

Design and Durability

• 00:01:53 The iPhone 17 Pro Max transitions from the titanium build of the 16 Pro Max to an anodized aluminum unibody with an inserted glass piece on the back, primarily focusing on better heat dissipation. While concerns about aluminum's durability exist, real-world tests suggest it is quite robust, with the new Ceramic Shield 2 on the front being three times more scratch-resistant. The 17 Pro Max is slightly larger and heavier, but offers a smoother, more comfortable feel around the edges.

Battery and Charging

• 00:04:33 The iPhone 17 Pro Max features a larger 5,088 mAh battery, providing up to 39 hours of video playback, a notable increase from the 16 Pro Max's 4,685 mAh battery and 33 hours. Charging speeds are significantly improved with the 17 Pro Max, offering 25W MagSafe charging (50% in 30 minutes wirelessly) and wired charging up to 50% in just 20 minutes with a 40W adapter or higher, compared to the 16 Pro Max's 50% in 30 minutes with a 20W wired adapter.

Display Enhancements

• 00:08:10 The iPhone 17 Pro Max display introduces an anti-reflective coating that reduces reflections by 50% and boasts a peak brightness of 3000 nits, making it much easier to view in bright light without dimming. A significant new feature is 'PWM smoothing' in accessibility settings, which reduces the flicker effect of pulse-width modulation, offering a smoother display output at low brightness levels and alleviating eye strain or headaches for sensitive users.

Performance and Connectivity

• 00:11:14 The iPhone 17 Pro Max demonstrates smoother overall performance and quicker app loading times compared to the 16 Pro Max, backed by 12GB of RAM (up from 8GB) and significantly higher benchmark scores, particularly in GPU performance. It also features updated Qualcomm 5G and Apple N1 wireless modems, offering consistently better signal strength for cellular and improved Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/Thread support, although Wi-Fi speed test results were occasionally inconsistent.