iPhone 17 Pro Max – What We Noticed!

INTRODUCTION :

Hi everyone, we can’t believe it’s already been months since the launch of the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max. We’ve been using it mainly as our main device for months, switching back and forth between the iPhone 17 Pro Max and the iPhone Air. And we think we’ve finally decided which one we’ll be using full-time for the rest of the year. But before we talk about that now, after using it, we thought we’d talk about the battery life and durability, display, cameras, and much more.

Design :

The first thing is the design, though. The overall design of the iPhone 17 Pro Max is becoming more loved, making the iPhone 16 Pro Max look a little bit dated now. We had the same sort of design for the past four years or four different iterations of iPhone. And we think it’s still a great look, but again, it’s a little bit old as Apple used to change it every couple of years back in the day. We think many have grown used to the new camera plateau at Apple, calls it the new antenna lines, the aluminum frame, and of course, there are some downsides to that as well, we’ll talk about in a bit.

But one of the main issues we had was the build of the overall phone, and it just felt a little bit off when we were using the blue version. You may have seen us use the blue version in different videos for quite some time, but one thing we noticed when we switched over to the 17 Pro Max is that the feel was much different. And this may be minor. Of course, if you’re using it in some cases, you won’t notice this at all.

But if we take a look at this indent here, or this glass that’s laid into the back here, it’s a little bit recessed under the lip of the aluminum. This is different than what we have on the 17 Pro Max in blue. On the blue one, it’s actually raised a little bit. And as you move your finger around the outside edge, you can feel the glass. It’s completely different than the 17 Pro Max in silver, where you can feel the glass is raised here on the blue one, but not on the silver one.

So, there’s a very big difference there. When you pick it up, it feels nice and smooth, and it feels a little bit more premium than the blue one we have. So, we didn’t realise that’s actually a difference in there. And we’re not sure that you can see it on camera, but if we bring this up here, you can just feel there’s a lip there on the blue one where you can’t feel the glass at all on this one. So, we’re not sure if you can see it’s raised just a little bit right there, and it’s not on the silver one.

We know this is very minor. Most people wouldn’t care, but we don’t use a case on our phone typically. We like the feel of it just like this, and we don’t feel that piece of glass here, and it just makes it feel like it’s built a little bit better. Now, the camera plate certainly accumulates quite a bit of dust, especially on the darker models, as you saw here with the blue one. It gets quite a bit of dust around the lenses. That’s pretty typical. We’ll talk more about dropping them and possible damage in a little bit, but we think the design has really grown on us.

We like the curvature of the edges, and we think it’s very premium to hold. We don’t think most people would be able to tell the difference between titanium and aluminium.

One of the main reasons people pick up the 17 Pro Max. It has a great battery. It’s a very large battery, especially if you don’t have a SIM card in the United States, and it easily gets us through the day with one exception. When we were at CES, it was rough because there were so many people on the same cell networks, and it was a bit congested, and always looking for a signal in different areas of the convention. Oftentimes, we would have full bars or a full signal, but then it wouldn’t be able to connect, and there were just lots of issues, at least with T-Mobile and maybe some other networks as well.

So, lots of different issues due to congestion, but that’s not really the phone’s fault. That’s just the congestion of so many people being there. Once we were back home, it worked fine and again got us through the day. So, at the time of this video, it’s 12:30 a.m., and we thought we’d share our battery life. So, if we go into setting, battery, battery health. This one is again a newer one. We haven’t used it completely.

It’s got seven cycles with 100% capacity. We never thought we’d be using this one, but we really like the silver color. But if we take a look at the overall battery usage here, you’ll see we’ve been using it with iOS 26.2.1, 2.1, and yesterday had 3 hours and 5 minutes of screen active time, 4 hours and 18 minutes of screen idle time, and used 64% of the battery. Now, that may not seem like a lot, but after 3 hours of battery use on the iPhone Air, we were completely out of power. So, using this and having half of our battery life left is pretty great just to use that, get through the day, and not worry about it.

So, other than maybe in a high congestion area or a little low signal, it’s really pretty good when it comes to battery life. Most people are saying it doesn’t drop down to 99% battery health until about 150 cycles or so between the different iPhone 17 Pro Maxes that we have, or probably around 50 to 60 cycles. And we have even 70 or more cycles on the iPhone Air as we went back and forth, but had to charge it multiple times per day sometimes.

So, this has been really great to use. Again, very good battery life, especially when you’re in an area with a great signal. Other than the battery cycles we have on the silver iPhone 17 Pro Max, we used the cosmic orange one for 16 cycles, and also the blue one for 57 cycles. So, we’ve used this quite a bit over the past 4 months, but just had the fortunate opportunity to switch between the different colours. So, it’s not something we would typically do, but this year we were sort of undecided, and we don’t typically return the phones or anything.

So, we decided to use the silver one, which we initially bought to be a camera, as it’s a 1 TBTE model.

Charging :

Now, as far as charging, we typically charge on a wireless charger on our nightstand using MagSafe, and we use a charging pad in the car that’s cooled. So, it’s nice that it has a little fan in there once it activates to help keep things cool. It doesn’t do a great job, but it definitely helps. But when travelling, we like to use a compact charger that can do it all.

And one of the best ones is from today’s sponsor, Anker, who’s been a long-term partner of the channel. This is the new 25 W Max Palm size 3in-1 charger with active cooling. It’s from Anker’s most advanced fast charging flagship lineup. It utilizes G2 25-watt charging to give your iPhone the fastest possible wireless charge to 50% in just 26 minutes while staying cool thanks to Active Shield 5.0 technology and active airflow cooling.

This, of course, can help maintain battery health for longer periods. But the charger doesn’t just charge an iPhone, it can charge an Apple Watch and AirPods along with an iPhone, all at once with one charger and one cable. It’s great for travel, smaller than an iPhone, and it’s super compact. But it’s also great on your desk, where you can easily rotate it to use standby mode. And with its adjustable hinge, you can move it from 0° to 60°. And it stays where you want with its high-precision hinge.

And it’s not just some random charger, but carries the CH2 watt certifications and is made for Apple Watch certifications. Anker’s new products are some of our favorites.

Cameras :

Now, when it comes to the cameras, the cameras are some of the best cameras we’ve ever had on an iPhone. In fact, we would say they’re probably the best for video. Maybe not the very best for photos, but they’re still great either way. It’s excellent this year and can be easily used for YouTube videos like this, TikTok, or whatever you want to film.

In fact, we often film with this when we’re on the go if we need something to film with. We’ve filmed different videos, which you’ve seen on the channel with it, and it’s worked really well, and no one even noticed that it was different from the normal cinema camera that we typically use. Now, if we go into the camera, one of the things we don’t typically use is the newer features with ProRes; we find that the H.265 is good enough.

And if we switch over to video mode here, 4K 60, 4K120 works fine without overheating. No real issues. And of course, if we spin this around, we can switch to the dual video mode here. And of course, use this while we’re talking on the screen at the same time. So, if we go ahead and hit record here, now we’re recording directly from the iPhone 17 Pro Max. You can hear what the audio is like, the microphones, even without an external microphone. And of course, we can show you something in front of us, such as this 17 Pro Max in blue.
So, the cameras are excellent, and we think that anyone starting on YouTube, this is a great choice. Even the regular base 17, especially the front-facing camera being the same, is a great option for this. Now, if we stop the recording, of course, if we turn this back off. So, with the front-facing camera, if we spin it around, of course, we can go into landscape this time, as we have more of an open gate style sensor. This is something we think we’ll see soon on different manufacturers’ phones.

It’s the way to go, having the option to just hold it vertically. And then, of course, you’ve got dual capture and all those other features. But, as we mentioned before, we don’t really use a lot of the Pro features because they’re just too big in file size. ProRes, RAW, those sorts of things are great. Apple Log 2, Gen Lock, they’re great if you need them, but for day-to-day use, H.265 is fine. And again, most people won’t notice the difference, especially if you’re posting on YouTube.

This is just a great camera package overall. Now, we do find one thing we use on this that we thought we wouldn’t really miss on the iPhone Air: the ultrawide camera. That’s something we utilize more than we thought. We don’t really use the telephoto zoom. We do use 2x from time to time, but we don’t use the 4 and 8x options at all. So, they’re helpful to be there, but we really need two cameras. And we think if the iPhone Air had that, along with maybe dual speakers and a bigger battery, it would be one of the best phones ever made.

But at this point, the 17 Pro Max cameras are really where it’s at when it comes to recording video regularly and taking photos.

Durability & Scratches :

Now, let’s talk about durability and scratches, as that’s something that many people are concerned about this year with these phones. Now, fortunately, we have all three different colours this year, and we wanted to share some of the scratches that we have. We’ve mentioned in videos before that the orange version, or cosmic orange, actually fell off a tripod and got a little ding on it.

So, we wanted to share that. We’ll show you the one on the display here. Now, as we’ve mentioned in other videos, we dropped this off a tripod from about 3 to 4 feet. It was just leaning on the tripod. It wasn’t secured in. We thought it was fine, and it fell off directly onto rocks and into some gravel. And the only damage was this little nick on the display here. That’s a testament to the newer upgrade ceramic shield.

And the only other thing is a little nick in the frame. We’ll show you macro mode in just a moment. But the display has held up extremely well. The same is true for the other one, the blue one. There’s not a single scratch on it that we’ve been able to find. Nothing whatsoever. Just a few smudges from fingerprints, but there’s not a single scratch, not even micro scratches that you see in sunlight. So, this is way, way better than what we had in previous years.

For example, our 16 Pro Max from last year, which we used regularly, has some scratches on the bottom. And this one held up better than previous years, but the new one holds up even better than that. But let’s switch to macro so we can show you some of the damage that we have, as people are very concerned about maybe the durability around some of the anodized coating and aluminum. Now, within macro mode, if we take a look at the iPhone 17 Pro Max and Cosmic Orange, you’ll see a little bit of a nick right there at the end of our finger.

So, that’s just from falling on rocks, not anything else. It’s held up really well. The only other thing we have is that with the blue version of the iPhone 17 Pro Max, there’s a little bit of a scuff around the camera. This is not unusual from year to year for us. For example, with the 16 Pro Max, you’ll see that it has the same thing. This is just from setting it down on a table, placing it in our pocket, and putting it on a desk. That’s all we do with this, and that’s what we’ve got as far as the scuffs go.

So, that’s what made the difference there. And then on this 17 Pro Max in blue, you’ll see a little bit more scuffing here. Again, this is just from setting it down. So, it definitely can wear a little bit. This is so light that you don’t really notice it in most situations. Of course, a case would prevent this, but we really like the feel of the phone without it. And then if it does get damaged, we can bring it into Apple Care. But on the back of this iPhone 17 Pro Max in blue, not a single scratch whatsoever.

Maybe a little line here from setting it on the table, but it’s really held up very, very well. On the silver version, there’s nothing on it whatsoever. It hasn’t been used as much, of course. And you can see here, it looks brand new. So, durability-wise, it’s much better than we think most people report if you take care of your phone. Some people have reported discoloration on the Cosmic Orange one. weren’t sure what they’re using on the back of it. We cleaned this with quite a few things with no issues whatsoever, but it hasn’t had an issue for me.

The same is true with the blue one. And we’ve even banged it against Mag Safe chargers and everything else. And really, it’s not an issue for us. We think it would take more abrasiveness to actually scuff that more. But if you’re prone to dropping your phone, of course, then you would want a case.

Display and PWM :

As far as the display, it’s the best iPhone display ever. We can say that confidently after using it for months. Even switching from the iPhone Air back to this, for some reason, this just seems a little bit more vibrant to us.

We’re not sure what it is. They should be the same displays. They both go up to 3,000 nits. And of course, in very high brightness situations, this one just performs great. Compared to previous iPhones, we can keep it at the highest brightness levels, and it never dims, even due to heat. So, in the summer or at the end of September, we were using this in an event outside. We mentioned this before. It was over 90° Fahrenheit, and it was no problem whatsoever compared to our brother’s phone, which actually started to dim.

So, it was easy to see and not an issue outside. And supposedly the next one’s supposed to be even brighter. Of course, the other reason it’s one of the best is because of PWM support. We mentioned this before. So that’s how the phone actually controls brightness. It flickers faster or slower. It can cause you to feel nauseated or just give you eye strain, and not feel well in general.

But they now have an option for it, display pulse smoothing. So if you turn this on, it turns off PWM and makes it much easier on your eyes. Whether or not it actually affects battery life is hard to say. We’ve always had it on, and we haven’t really noticed a difference, though. But we’re just glad they finally listened, and hopefully that will be on all future iPhones.

Heat and Thermals :

When it comes to heat and thermal management, well, again, this is something they’ve greatly improved. Not only does the display stay bright, but if you’re recording video, again, it continues to do that without overheating.

And the thermal signature is super nice when it’s actually using it because it dissipates the heat across the phone. So, because it’s an aluminium frame, it can dissipate that heat out, but also because it has a vapour chamber, it gets rid of it and continues to work really well. So, with the phone sitting idle, it’s sitting around 29 to 30° C on the back, not really doing a whole lot here, but this just gives you an idea of the thermal signature.

If we go ahead and run benchmarks, we’ve shown this in other videos. So, now that it’s running benchmarks, if we flip it back over here, we can see the heat signature is a little bit different as it’s getting a little bit warm right over the processor, but really handling the heat without a problem. So, it just sort of dissipates that heat out and never really heats up as much as the other phones did.

Benchmarks :

So, with benchmarks complete, we have 3,811 for single core, 9,514 for multi-core.

This would improve quite a bit. Usually, if we run it a couple of times, we can get over 10,000 from multi-core, but it’s well within the margin of error. And this doesn’t really show the experience of the phone, which has been great.

Performance :

Thanks to the new A19 Pro chip-set that we can see here, along with 12 gigs of RAM, it really just flies in most applications. Now, it has been let down a little bit by iOS 26, with some of the animations, things going a little bit slower, but on the 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max, it’s just fluid and fast all the time.

Thankfully, with the latest updates to iOS 26.2.1, it seems to be much, much better. Battery life may need to improve a little bit over time, but we think it’s getting through the day, as we’ve mentioned before, without an issue. And just doing everyday tasks, whether it’s going into music, going into podcasts. We’ll just download now. We’ll go back over. Maybe we’ll go into translation. Then, we’ll go back out. And if we go into a game, or maybe go into Apple TV, everything just works as you would expect from an Apple product.

It’s very fast and fluid. We’ll see it’s filling in there, no problem. Everything’s just super fast. Of course, if we play games a lot, it’s the fastest one out there and maintains higher frame rates for longer periods of time, thanks again to that new processor and vapour chamber. So, we think the one thing that can be frustrating is keyboard lag that people still experience on the latest phones.

So, this is the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and we’ll see here it keeps up just fine. Sometimes there’s mistypes that seem to be a problem with the software, but it does seem much better with the latest updates. But again, Apple needs to improve this, but we will get updates for many years. With this being the latest phone, we would expect 5 to 7 years of regular updates, putting it at iOS 31 to iOS 33. And of course, Apple just recently updated the iPhone 5S after 12 years to help it continue to use iMessage and FaceTime.

So, Apple really pays attention to that. Keeps their devices running despite some people saying they slow them down. We think it’s just iOS 26’s lack of optimisation here. So, that’s something that’s a bit of a disappointment.

Is It Worth Upgrading?

We think it will get better as Apple continues to focus on reliability, stability, and overall usability. Now, when it comes to future updates and whether or not it’s worth upgrading this phone or not, we would say that if you have an iPhone 16 Pro Max and you’re happy with the experience, I’d probably wait and not upgrade.

At this point, we’re almost halfway through the year, and we’ll start to see newer phones, and there’s a rumored folding phone coming out as well. The iPhone 18 models are expected to largely look the same, possibly with different color options and some camera upgrades. So, at this point, if we can get it for a great deal, it’s worth upgrading. Especially if we were on an older phone, maybe you’ve been holding out for years. You’re on an iPhone 14, an iPhone 12. You’ll be very pleased with how fast this phone is, how good the battery is, and how great the camera is.

And even though it’s aluminum, and some people are concerned about that, we still think it feels premium. At least it does to us anyway. We’ve been through every single iPhone ever made, and the iPhone 6 probably felt the cheapest, along with the iPhone 3 and 3GS. Those were plastic, maybe the 5C as well. This one feels pretty good. But if we ding it up, of course, then we’re going to notice.

It doesn’t feel the same as titanium because it’s just less squared off. But if we handed both phones to someone not being titanium or knowing the difference, we don’t think many people would notice until you pointed it out, as it still feels premium, especially with a case on it.

Our Decision :

After using the iPhone 17 Pro Max in silver, there’s just something about the contrast in colour that stands out to me. We didn’t think we’d ever like silver this much, but after using the blue and even the orange, we think this is the colour for me, and I’ll be using this for the remainder of 2026 until the next models come out.

We love the iPhone Air. It still feels like the future. We love the thinness of it, but it’s just lacking a few things that we really need. We like the larger display. Maybe that’s because we’re a little bit older and want a larger display. We are not sure. We like the dual speakers; however, they don’t matter as much to us unless you’re holding it in landscape.

And we also like the larger battery when we’re traveling. That’s a big plus for us. And of course, we can use the MagSafe battery pack, but using the MagSafe battery pack makes it thicker than the iPhone 17 Pro Max. So, we’d rather just bring one phone along with us instead of the battery pack itself. Now, of course, we have that wide-angle camera again that we didn’t think we’d need as much, but we do appreciate it. We don’t necessarily need that all the time, but that’s why we’re sticking with the 17 Pro Max this year.

We really, really like the Air. If they add a camera, a larger battery, and another speaker, we think that would be a hit, and we’ll definitely use it. But at this point, we’ve switched back, and this will officially be our phone for the rest of the year, even though we love the 17 Air or the iPhone Air.

Conclusion :

That’s it for the iPhone 17 Pro Max, likely until a 6-month follow-up and then a one-year follow-up after that. Let us know what you think of the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Which colour did you choose? As always, thanks for watching. We’ll see you next time.