It's been a month since I reviewed the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max, and I've had even more time with them to test the batteries, the A7 Pro chip, that camera control button, and Apple intelligence. Just kidding about that last one; it's still not out yet. So, let's get into it. Let me start by saying that even without Apple intelligence, I really like the iPhone 16 Pro, which has been my daily driver for the past month. Apple intelligence, which is in beta currently as part of iOS 18.1, is rumored to drop at the end of October. We'll definitely have a lot more to say about it then, but I've been running an early preview version of Apple intelligence and wanted to shout out one of my favorite features: summarize. This shows up in a few different ways on the iPhone 16 Pro if you're running the beta. I can summarize text threads, email threads, but my favorite use is to summarize online stories. So, if you see a click-bait headline in your newsfeed that promises

to tell you the meaning of life or how to cook the best chicken. You can just hit the summarize button to avoid all the ads, the popups, the newsletter invites, the bulked-up introduction with Amazon links, and get right to the point. Now, is it worth buying an iPhone 16 Pro for Apple intelligence's summarized tool? No, but I like the direction Apple is headed. I want to start by shouting out a couple of underrated features on the 16 Pro, and the first is the new lower brightness screen. This screen can get down to 1 Hertz. And how dim is that? Well, the 15 Pro went down to 2, and that difference doesn't seem huge, but in real life, it really is, especially for someone who reads in bed or in a dark environment. There's a lot less glare coming off your phone, and I really appreciate that. The next underrated feature I want to mention is the speakers. The speakers on these phones, whether it's the Pro or the Pro Max, are not only loud but have a beautiful sound quality, and

even a little bit of bass. I don't know if these are the best speakers ever on any phone, but it's definitely the best speakers ever on an iPhone. So, there's a new camera control button on these phones, and I like the idea of the button, but I don't think the execution is perfect. I think the placement is a little odd. I think for opening the camera, it's a great shortcut, but I could do that with other buttons on the phone. But an actual use for pulling up menus or doing minute stuff if you're running gun photography, this is not the button to use. The onscreen stuff is still faster. It does feel to me like Apple wanted this to be the visual intelligence button, but that wasn't ready at launch. And it would be really odd if Apple had launched a phone with a new button that didn't do anything. And it really seems like these camera stuff was meant to be a nice add-on. So, I don't think it's great if you're looking to buy this phone just for that button. Don't during

my time with the phones. A question I get frequently from a lot of photographer friends and creative types is, Are the cameras new on the phones? And it really depends on the model. For the 16 Pro, all three cameras in the back were not on the 15 Pro. You got all three are brand new on the 16 Pro Max. It's just the ultra-wide camera that's brand new and the sensor on the main camera that's new. The telephoto is exactly the same as the one on the 15 Pro. [Music] Max, with all the focus on Apple intelligence, one of the things I feel that's gotten overshadowed on the phones is iOS 18, which is outstanding. And there's so many great features, being able to add new tapbacks that are emojis to a conversation. But one of my favorite things goes back to online articles. So let's say you didn't have that summarized tool in Apple intelligence. There's now a way to go onto a website and remove distractions as what it's

called so I can remove ads. I can remove popups. I can remove videos if I want from a page that I'm reading. And not only can you remove them, there's this really satisfying animation that makes you feel like you're doing Thanos's snap and that ad is gone, snap that video is gone. I really like that. In my original film for the iPhone 16 Pro, I shouted out how much I like the new slow-mo feature, the 4K 120 frames per second video recording, and I still think it is one of the best new iPhone features in years. Even after a month, I use it quite a bit, but I've dabbled more with the ProRes version, so you're able to actually save even bigger files with more detail, and I want to play more with that. But for everyday stuff, I love using slow-mo. It looks great. I love posting these to Instagram and sharing them with friends. My favorite feature on the iPhone 16 Pro, and please do not make fun of me, is the

battery. The battery life is outstanding. Is it dramatically better than the 15 Pro? No, but it's one of the best and longest-lasting batteries we've tested on any phone this year. Let me explain. Not only has the battery been solid at getting me through a day, the iPhone 16 Pro was aces in our CET battery tests. In a 45-minute battery drain test where I play games, stream videos, scroll social media, and take a video call, the iPhone 16 Pro and the entire 16 series did fantastic. I mean, look at the iPhone 16 Plus's score. And here's how the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max stack up against previous iPhone Pro Models in the same test. The difference between the 16 Pro and Pro Max and the 14 Pro and Pro Max is wild. So much improvement. In our 3-hour streaming video test, the phones did equally as well with modest improvements over last year's iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. And here's how the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max did against

other phones, and it's right alongside the likes of the Galaxy S24 Ultra and Xiaomi 14 Ultra. Now, of course, the outlier here is the OnePlus 12, which only dropped 5% over 3 hours. In terms of charging, we ran a 30-minute wireless charging test on the iPhones. Now, Apple doesn't say what the max supported charging speed is and pushes their 20W wall charger, but some publications and tech YouTubers say that the phones can support 45W wired charging. So, for the Pro models, I used a 67W charger, which recharged an empty battery to 56% and 57% for the 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max, respectively. But one of the nice surprises is that these phones support 25W MagSafe wireless charging. You do need to buy a 30W charger for your MagSafe charger, but in our 30-minute wireless charging test, the phones charged between 25% and 50% wirelessly. That 50% charge by the iPhone 16 Pro is

simply outstanding. Okay, so after using these phones for a month, specifically the iPhone 16 Pro, which is the one I've been using, my recommendations for this have not changed from my original view. If you have an iPhone 12 Pro or older, upgrade if you can, if you can afford it. It's going to be a huge upgrade in every way. If you have a 13 Pro, I'm kind of on the fence. If you have a decent battery capacity still left on that phone, there's no reason to upgrade. And if you have a 14 Pro or 15 Pro, unless you really want to, there's not a big reason to upgrade. I could see from the 14 Pro to get Apple Intelligence, but I don't know if it would be worth it at this point. So those are my thoughts on the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max after a month. The next big shoe to drop with these phones will be the public release of Apple Intelligence. It won't be the whole shebang like the Chat GPT integration, Gen Mooji, and image

playgrounds won't be available, but it should help make these iPhones feel more complete. But now I want to hear from you. If you have an iPhone 16 Pro or Pro Max, what are your favorite features? Let me know in the comments. Lastly, if you've enjoyed this video, please give it a thumbs up, and thank you for watching.

iPhone 16 Pro: Here's What I Learned After a Month

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