iPhone 14 Pro Max vs iPhone 13 Pro Max

iPhone 14 Pro Max vs. iPhone 13 Pro Max design and display

At first glance, the iPhone 14 Pro Max resembles its predecessor, with flat edges surrounding a 6.7-inch display that takes up much of the phone’s face. The big difference isn’t so big at all, once you notice it — there’s a new pill-shaped cutout in the center of the top of the display that houses the phone’s camera array, replacing the smaller notch from last year’s phones.

Apple has branded this oblong cutout the Dynamic Island, and iOS is being designed to animate around it so things like notifications and status indicators will appear to surround or pop out of the cutout.

Up front the iPhone 14 Pro Max maintains the same 6.7-inch OLED display as its predecessor, but this time it’s designed with an always-on display that’s built to show off your lock screen, which is more customizable than ever in iOS 16.

The graphite, silver and gold colors from the iPhone 13 Pro Max are still available on the new model, as is a new Deep Purple shade — regrettably, Apple appears to have ditched the blue and green color options offered on last year’s model.

The new iPhone 14 Pro Max has the same adaptive refresh rate technology as its predecessor, but while the iPhone 13 Pro Max could only go from 120Hz down to 10Hz, the new iPhone 14 Pro Max can go from 120Hz to as low as 1Hz. That helps the always-on display conserve power, matching a similar feature offered on Samsung’s Galaxy S22 Ultra.

iPhone 14 Pro Max vs. iPhone 13 Pro Max cameras

While the iPhone 14 Pro Max sports effectively the same rear camera array as its predecessor, featuring wide, ultrawide and telephoto lenses is coming to the iPhone 14 Pro Max, expect a big change to that main camera.

The iPhone 14 Pro Max now has a 48MP main camera up front, ending years of 12MP sensors appearing on Apple’s phones. That new sensor should help the iPhone 14 Pro Max deliver better photos, and Apple claims its new Photonic Engine tech will further improve the quality of low-light photos captured with the iPhone 14 Pro Max.

The iPhone 14 Pro Max is also better at capturing video than its predecessor, since it can now record videos in cinematic mode (for shallow depth of field) at up to 30 fps in 4K HDR, whereas its predecessor could only manage the same at 1080p with no HDR. The iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max also have access to a new Action Mode for capturing videos full of high-speed action.

Add up all these changes, and it’s looking like the iPhone 14 Pro Max will provide a better camera experience than the iPhone 13 Pro Max — impressive, since that latter phone already ranks as the best camera phone in our estimation. Of course, we’ll have to wait until we test one out for ourselves to know for sure.

iPhone 14 Pro Max vs. iPhone 13 Pro Max performance

The iPhone 14 Pro Max packs Apple’s A16 Bionic chip, an upgraded version of the A15 Bionic that powered last year’s phone. This new A16 Bionic packs a 6-core CPU with 2 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores, as well as a 5-core GPU and a 16-core Neural Engine.

The new chipset is also built on a 4-nanometer process vs. its predecessor’s 5nm process. Put simply, these specs suggest you should expect the iPhone 14 Pro Max to be faster and more powerful than the iPhone 13 Pro Max, but not by a huge margin.

Power management is key now that the iPhone 14 Pro Max comes with an always-on display, and the A16 is designed to smartly manage the display and its 1-120Hz refresh rate to conserve power.