Comparsion Of iPhone 15 Pro Max vs iPhone 17 Pro Max

Introduction:

Hi everyone, many have been asking us to c

Compare the iPhone 15 Pro Max with the iPhone 17 Pro Max. We wanted to help you decide whether you should upgrade from the 15 Pro Max to the 17 Pro Max or maybe wait until next year when we have the iPhone 18 Pro Max. So, we’ll cover everything from speed, battery life, cameras, and more. Now, the iPhone 17 Pro Max starts at a low range and goes up to a high range, and you have the option of 256, 512, 1 TB, or 2 TB of storage. With the iPhone 15 Pro Max, it also started at mid-range, went up to mid-range, and offered 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB.

However, you can no longer pick up the 15 Pro Max as Apple no longer sells it new in their store. When it comes to the overall colours, Apple gave us just three colours this year, with cosmic orange, deep blue, which we have here, as well as a silver colour. With the iPhone 15 Pro Max, they switched to titanium, and we had a few different colour options. This one is blue titanium. There was also a black titanium, white titanium, and natural titanium as well. When it comes to the overall materials, many people really like the iPhone 15 Pro Max because it’s made of titanium.

The outside edge is coated with titanium, and in natural titanium, it doesn’t show any scratches, but in this blue finish, you can see that there are quite a few here, as far as durability goes. So, we have scratches throughout. It’s pretty typical for the blue titanium to sort of chip off over time. And we’re seeing similar things with the new aluminium design of the 17 Pro Max.

While it seems to be fairly durable as far as anodization, it is a softer metal, and the overall design is a bit controversial. You can already see here where some of the finishes come off. This is fairly typical of what we’ve seen on all of our iPhones, where you’ll see it in the same place on the 15 Pro Max due to overall durability just from setting them down on the table. So, it’s not really that much of a concern, but there is a material difference, and the 15 Pro Max feels a little bit more, maybe high-end, because it’s titanium, whereas the 17 Pro Max is a little bit more comfortable to hold with the overall curves in the back.

Both are great phones, but there are some differences between them. The 17 Pro Max also has a more durable ceramic shield, too, which is three times better at scratch resistant than the previous generation. It’s on the front, and we have a ceramic shield on the back as well. We have this two-tone design where we have Mag Safe underneath here, but also this glass design here to go along with it.

The overall glass on the 15 Pro Max is nowhere near as durable. In fact, you can see all of the scratches after using it for one year just from sort of bringing it in and out of our pocket, maybe hitting it on a few different things. However, the 17 Pro Max so far has proved to be very, very durable. We don’t have a single scratch on it, and even on a different occasion, we actually dropped one that we have on rocks, and it has a very small Nick is in it and has no scratches. It’s holding up very well, and at this point, in maybe a couple of months after the release of the 17 Pro Max, the screen is turning out to be one of the most durable, if not the most durable, ever.

Size Comparison:

When it comes to the overall dimensions of both phones, well, the iPhone 17 Pro Max is a little bit bigger. Apple has changed that with the overall frame, giving us a larger display we’ll talk about in a moment, but also it’s a little bit thicker, and that accommodates a larger battery and some other things as well.

a larger battery and some other things as well. So, if we take a look around the outside edge, we have a few differences here. Apple has moved the millimetre wave antenna to the top of the 17 Pro Max. They’ve actually integrated the antenna for 5G and cellular around the outside of the camera bump here, or the camera plateau, as Apple calls it. And then on the bottom, you’ll see it’s mostly the same. So again, USBC, we have all of the normal buttons with volume, action button, and then camera control and power sleep awake.

Weight:

On the 15 Pro Max, there is no camera control, but we do have amillimetre wavee antenna where the new camera control is. So, everything else is the same with USBC, but the overall buttons are similar for volume and action button, but again, there is no camera control button here. Now, given that we have a material difference and different batteries and overall size, the iPhone 15 Pro Max comes in at 7.81 oz or 221 g, where the iPhone 17 Pro Max comes in at 8.22 22 oz or 233 g. So, there’s definitely a difference here. It’s definitely a much larger phone to hold, as far as the 17 Pro Max goes.

Cameras:

The 15 Pro Max feels like it was maybe the peak design of what we had with iPhone. When it comes to the cameras, the front cameras are quite different this time around, with the iPhone 15 Pro Max having a 12 megapixel sensor. It does have ProRes log, but it has a 12 megapixel sensor and can record in 4K. With the 17 Pro Max, we have an all-new 18 megapixel open-gate sensor that’s ultra-stabilised and also has centre stage for photos and video calls.

If we go into the camera, spin it around, and hit this button here, and now have a landscape while we’re actually using the front-facing camera in portrait. So, this allows us to use landscape, or we can hit the button and go back to portrait. And we have this option built in, along with CCentreStage. You can turn that on or off. And then we also have a bunch of other video modes that go along with the rear cameras as well. So with the 15 Pro Max, we have the main 48 megapixel camera, 1.78 aperture, an ultra-wide 12 megapixel camera with an f/2.2 aperture, and a telephoto zoom 12 megapixel f2.8 aperture.

With the iPhone 17 Pro Max, we have 48 megapixel sensors on all three of them. Apple doesn’t technically go into the f-stops of what each one of them has, but they’re 48 megapixel fusion cameras for the main camera, the ultra-wide, and telephoto, with the 17 Pro Max. Before we take a look at some photo and video comparisons, it has quite a few more options. So, we have ProRes RAW video, and we have Gen-lock support, and we also have something called dual capture.

So, if we tap this little icon here when in video mode, it will capture what we’re looking at here on the screen, as well as what’s behind us while we’re recording. So, you can move this around while you’re recording. You can see your own reaction to what you’re recording. And that’s something new that’s not in previous generations. We have a studio quality for mic array. We have audio mixes, wind noise reduction, spatial video, and all of those things carry across to the 15 Pro Max as well.

In the video Zoom:

But we have even better features for video on the 17 Pro Max. So, let’s go ahead and take a look at some photos and video and see what you think about both of them. This is the forward-facing camera of the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the iPhone 17 Pro Max. The iPhone 17 Pro Max this year allows for open gate recording or landscape while holding it in portrait mode.

Battery Capacity and Charging:

So, if we switch over to that, so you’ll see with the 17 Pro Max, we’re now in landscape even though we’re holding the phone vertically. And the microphones are basically the same. You still have studio, in frame, and all of the other options that we have with the microphone since the iPhone 15 Pro Max. So, let us know which one you think looks best and sounds best. When it comes to the overall batteries, the iPhone 15 Pro Max comes in at 4,422 mAh, and Apple says that it is good up to 29 hours of video playback.

But with the iPhone 17 Pro Max, we have the largest battery ever in an iPhone at 5,088 milliamp. And that’s good for over 10 hours more battery life or 39 hours of video playback. Now, that’s dependent on how you use it, of course, but most people using the 17 Pro Max easily get 10 to 14 hours of screen time and get through the day. My own usage is a little bit different as we run betas and things like that. And this particular phone has 22 cycles at 100% capacity.

It definitely gets us through a day. We’re currently at 42%, and it’s been on for over 12 hours at this point. Charging is also a little bit different, where the iPhone 15 Pro Max charges to 50% in 35 minutes and also supports MagSafe. The iPhone 17 Pro Max supports 40-watt or higher charging, which gets you to 50% in 20 minutes, even though it has a larger battery capacity. It also supports 25-watt MagSafe G2 25-watt compatible charging, and that gets you 50% in 30 minutes with a 30-watt adapter or higher, which is even faster than the wired charging that you get with the 15 Pro Max.

We can check this phone, as we used it for an entire year before the next one came out. And you’ll see it’s at 87% capacity with 331 cycles. The overall cycles should be about the same. 1,000 cycles should bring you down to about 80% battery health. And then if we take a look at our battery usage here, it’s not going to show much on the 15 Pro Max, but you can see 42% was only 45 minutes as we did some updates. But on the 17 Pro Max, we had 4 hours and 23 minutes of screen active time. at 2 hours and 26 minutes of screen idle time and use 69% of the battery.

Displays:

So, it’s a nice improvement there. When it comes to the displays, the iPhone 15 Pro Max is a little bit smaller at 6.7 in and also is 2796x 1,290 at 460 pixels per inch. It goes up to 2,000 nits of brightness and supports 120 Hz prootion. The iPhone 17 Pro Max is a little bit larger at 6.9 in 2,868x 120 again at 460 pixels per inch.

However, it goes up to 3,000 nits of brightness. It’s noticeably brighter in sunlight, easier to see, and stays brighter for longer. It also has an anti-reflective coating. So, if we turn off the displays here, they’re both always on displays, but the wallpaper is turned off. You can see that the overall reflectivity here is a little bit different. Also, iPhone 17 Pro Max does something with the 17 series that none of the others dodoesIf we go into accessibility, you’ll see there’s a new option here.

So, if we go under display and text size, scroll down, you’ll see that we have display pulse smoothing. This helps tremendously if you’re having issues with PWM or the way the display controls brightness. What it does is it flickers faster and slower, and you can’t see this with your eyes, but it can cause you to feel nauseated, maybe give you headaches, or just be a lot of eye strain and really bother you. This fixes that problem, and the 17 Pro Max is a big improvement there.

CPU and RAM:

The 15 Pro Max doesn’t really bother us much, especially at higher brightness levels, but it’s much better on the 17 Pro Max. So, if you’ve been wanting to switch to OLED, but you couldn’t because of that, the 17 Pro Max or any of the iPhone 17 series should fix that issue. Now, given that there’s a couple year difference between both phones, we have much faster processors now. The iPhone 17 Pro Max has an A19 Pro with 12 GB of RAM, while the iPhone 15 Pro Max has an A17 Pro with 8 GB of RAM, but an updated neural engine from the previous generation.

So, if you’re doing simple tasks just like opening apps, whether that’s music or something else, that’s going to be about the same. So, you’ll see as we load here, it loaded into the replay 2025. If we go into a podcast, for example, it’s going to just take a moment to load everything. And generally, you’ll find that the overall experience is very similar, but with the new iOS 26 update, you’ll see that the 17 Pro Max is just faster. So, if we swipe over, maybe to the app library, and then we scroll, generally the 17 Pro Max will seem about the same here until you start to load some apps.
Thermals and Heat:

For example, if we go into maybe well, let’s go over to Geekbench and measure that. So, we’ll go into Geekbench 6. Give it a second to load here. You can see the overall processors and the RAM difference here. And if we start the benchmark, this can vary greatly as it seems to be inconsistent, but let’s go ahead and run it and see what we get here. Now, as it’s running Geekbench, one of the big advantages of the 17 Pro Max is that it now has a vapour chamber to help dissipate heat.

The aluminium chassis helps with that as well, as titanium doesn’t get rid of heat as well. And we can show you the thermal signature that will actually point this out. With the thermal camera, you can see that the overall heat signature is much more spread out on the 17 Pro Max as it can better dissipate heat. If we go over to the 15 Pro Max, it’s much more focused on a general area.

Speed Comparison:

So, this was an issue when the 15 Pro Max first came out, where it really had some overheating issues. So, the 17 Pro Max can definitely stay cooler for longer. And you’ll see the benchmarks completed on the 17 Pro Max. We’ll wait for them for a moment with the 15 Pro Max. Now, even after running this, the 15 Pro Max feels much warmer than the 17 Pro Max, but you’ll see the overall benchmarks comparison. 7,221 compared to 9,722. So, much faster. In fact, many times we see this over 10,000.

But again, single core is much faster as well. When it comes to opening other things, such as maybe a game, let’s go ahead and go into one of those. Everything’s been updated. Let’s go ahead and open up Minecraft here. See what we get as far as the overall speed. And we’re already in the 17 Pro Max. So, you can see the speed difference already. Again, we’ll give it just a second here. And let’s go ahead and tap play. And we’ll create a new world and just see how fast it takes to create the world here, just doing tasks like that, especially after you run benchmarks and things like that. You’re going to notice a big difference there, especially with sustained frame rates and everything else.

When it comes to the overall speed of just opening and closing apps, things like that, the overall smoothness is generally pretty good. Whether you’re going into weather, Mercury weather here, going into the camera, you’ll see it’s generally about the same. So speedwise, for basic tasks is the same, but when you get into more advanced tasks or maybe games, it’s going to be a big difference, especially with the 17 Pro Max over time.
Wifi, Bluetooth, and Cellular:

The other thing worth noting is that the 17 Pro Max has an upgraded Qualcomm modem that’s much faster when it comes to overall speeds. And there’s also an advantage here with Wi-Fi 7 with Apple’s new N1 modem. So, we have Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, Thread support, and second-gen ultra-wideband. So, all of those are a big change with the 17 Pro Max. The 15 Pro Max has Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, ultra-wideband first gen, and Thread networking.

IP Ratings:

As far as IP ratings, both have the same ratings at 6 m for up to 30 minutes, so no real difference there.
Speakers:

The only other thing worth mentioning is the speakers. The 17 Pro Max is a little bit louder, and we can show you that as well. So, we’ll start with the iPhone 15 Pro Max. The iPhone 15 Pro Maxed out at about 89 dB or so, where the 17 Pro Max showed up to about 92 or 93 dB. So, a little bit louder overall, and we would say the sound is a little bit clearer at the highest volumes.

Which Should You Choose?

So, there’s definitely a little difference there. They’ve seemed to improve this just a little bit overall. And so, that’s everything with the iPhone 15 Pro Max versus the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Hopefully, that gives you a good idea whether or not it’s worth upgrading, whether you want to upgrade to the 15 Pro Max or maybe just wait another year to upgrade either to the 18 Pro Max or something else. So hopefully that helps you with your decision, but let us know what you’ve decided. As always, thanks for watching. We’ll see you next.