The iPhone 11 Pro Max is the best of everything from Apple – with a sky-high price tag to match.
The iPhone 11 Pro Max was the largest and most powerful phone Apple’s ever created, taking the very best of its technology and combining it with an upgraded design that includes a new matte back, three cameras designed to rival the best from Samsung, Google and Huawei, and an enhanced battery for greater endurance. The iPhone 11 Pro Max was, until the iPhone 12 Pro Max came along, leading the iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro in Apple’s march to the future. The new phone has some improved specs and a tweaked design from the iPhone 11 Pro Max, but 5G aside it’s only an annual update and not a revolution. Digging deeper into the iPhone 11 Pro Max camera, we’re impressed most with the Night mode: the iPhone 11 Pro Max is capable of turning night almost into day, but doing so while preserving plenty of detail. We found the newly-added ultra-wide camera to be handy when you want to squeeze in more of a scene (although we didn’t find we needed it that often) and for improving the background defocus effects… although it still wasn’t perfect in our testing. The design of the iPhone 11 Pro Max will be familiar to most, with the same design language as the previous two models (the iPhone X and iPhone XS), although the matte back feels nice in the hand. The ‚Max‘ size won’t appeal to all, but it does facilitate the large and impressive 6.5-inch OLED display, which offers a brilliant cinematic experience, both visually and through the upgraded stereo speakers. The camera bump on the rear of the phone feels a little sharp and takes up a lot of space, although if you’re right-handed it stays out of the way when you’re going about your daily tasks. Apple promises that the iPhone 11 Pro Max’s battery will last five hours longer than the XS Max from the previous year, and that claim is borne out in our tests – it particularly excelled when playing back HDR video on the phone, and the 20-hour battery life for multimedia seems accurate. In day-to-day use we found that this is just about a 24-hour smartphone (assuming you sleep for a portion of that time), and the fast charger that (finally) comes in the box gives you around 20% in 15 minutes, and a full charge in just an hour and a half. With iOS 13 on board – and now an update to iOS 14 – the Pro Max feels more refined than previous models, and tweaks to the accuracy and range of Face ID make it simpler to use every day, with things like opening a notification when the phone is placed flat on a desk made much easier. The raw performance of the iPhone 11 Pro Max also impressed, although we did encounter some slowdown in the camera app; however, if you’re looking to edit video on the go (and don’t forget this phone can shoot 4K at 60 frames per second, and do it well) then you’ll enjoy the extra grunt on offer. Overall, the iPhone 11 Pro Max is a real step forward, and the most advanced iPhone yet. However, when thinking about what’s truly new here, we weren’t able to single out much beyond the improved camera (especially Night mode) and the slightly upgraded cinematic experience. If you want to save some money, we’d suggest checking out the iPhone 11 – while we constantly found little nuggets of impressive performance throughout our testing of the 11 Pro Max, we couldn’t shake the feeling that this is really only a phone for the Apple fan who wants the best of everything, with no compromises. And for those fans, there’s now the iPhone 12 Pro Max. Want to know more? Read on to see our in-depth testing of Apple’s high-end smartphone. Update: Apple has confirmed the iPhone 11 Pro Max will receive iOS 15 when it lands later this year, so you’ll get all the latest features on this handset. The iPhone 11 Pro Max was announced on September 10,2019 and it came out on September 20 in the US, UK, Australia and a variety of other markets around the globe. It’s no longer sold directly by Apple now that the iPhone 12 range is out, but it’s still fairly easy to get from third-party stores. That said, the price might be a sticking point as it was the most expensive iPhone out there at launch and it’s still among the priciest now. Yes, it rivals the cost of some MacBooks in certain territories, but that’s not really a fair comparison – these are different products with different specifications, designed to do very different things. However, it does illustrate how expensive the iPhone 11 Pro Max is. The iPhone 11 Pro Max price starts at $1,099 / £1,149 / AU$1,899 for the 64GB model. Storage capacity then jumps to 256GB, with an asking price of $1,249 / £1,299 / AU$2,149. It then goes all the way up to $1,449 / £1,499 / AU$2,499 for the most expensive 512GB model – so if you’re not rich enough to swim regularly in a pool of money, it’s probably time to get saving. Having said that, many stores are now selling it for less. For example, at the time of writing we can see the iPhone 11 Pro Max on sale for £1,029 / AU1,699 (with most US deals being limited to contracts). You’ll have noticed the difference in cost between the UK and US – where previously Apple has been matching the dollars and pounds price tag for its iPhones, this time it’s a little different. In the United States, the standard price of the iPhone 11 Pro Max is the same as that of the phone it succeeds, the iPhone XS Max, but it’s risen in the United Kingdom, which is certainly going to irk some buyers there. Looking for a great iPhone 11 Pro Max deal? Check out the links below for all the best options. We don’t usually get into assessing the camera so quickly in our reviews, but the main change in 2019’s iPhone range is to the imaging quality on offer. In terms of hardware, the key difference is the addition of the ultra-wide camera, making it three cameras on the rear of the phone. These sit proud from the back of the iPhone 11 Pro Max, with the glass square surrounding them matching the color of the phone itself, which helps to minimize the visual impact of three prominent black holes on the rear. What you’ve got here are a ‘normal’ wide-angle lens, a telephoto lens, and a new ultra-wide one. The telephoto option zooms you 2x closer to your subject, and the ultra-wide-angle lens enables you to cram twice as much of the scene in front of you into the frame. This is great if you’re trying to get a shot of a group of friends or an animal, but can’t move further back or closer – the iPhone 11 Pro Max will allow you to crop in or pull back without having to move. All three cameras pack 12MP sensors, which is pretty standard for most smartphones these days, allowing for a good balance between pixel size (to capture more light) and resolution (for capturing plenty of detail). Video recording has also been improved, with the Pro Max now able to capture 4K at 60 frames per second (fps). This means you’re getting smoother footage thanks to more information being captured, but it’s worth remembering that this will fill up the storage on your iPhone that much quicker. There’s a lot that can be said about the iPhone’s – or any modern smartphone’s – camera these days, as they pack in so many features, and on the whole you’ll struggle to take a poor-quality snap with any of them. That means any brand trying to make a market-leading cameraphone needs to fill it with features, and that’s what Apple has tried to do here.
