iPhone 16 Plus vs. iPhone 16 Pro Max: Battle of the Big iPhones

During Apple’s Glowtime event, the company unveiled its latest iPhone 16 lineup. While the new phones share many of the same features, this year the gap between the two big phones — the regular and the premium — is even greater. Here’s the iPhone 16 Plus vs. the iPhone 16 Pro Max.

The most noticeable difference between the two larger phones is size, as they are no longer the largest iPhone ever. The iPhone 16 Plus still has a 6.7-inch display, but the iPhone 16 Pro Max has a 6.9-inch display, giving it the crown of largest iPhone ever.

There are side effects to this decision: the iPhone 16 Pro Max is everything the iPhone 16 Plus is, and the iPhone 16 Pro Max is slightly better. That comes at a literal price, with the iPhone 16 Plus with 128GB of storage starting at $899 (£899, AU$1,599), and the iPhone 16 Pro Max with 256GB of storage starting at $1,199 (£1,199, AU$2,149).

That’s a big price difference between the two, but there are a few things the bigger phone has that its smaller sibling doesn’t. The iPhone 16 Plus has a 48-megapixel Fusion camera (with a neat new 12-megapixel 2x digital zoom feature) and a 48-megapixel ultra-wide camera; the iPhone 16 Pro Max has it and a 12-megapixel telephoto camera with 5x optical zoom. Both phones have a 12-megapixel TrueDepth front-facing camera for selfies and FaceID.

The Pro Max also has a higher video ceiling, shooting 4K video at 120 frames per second, which is great for slow-motion conversions; the Plus hits 4K video at 60 frames per second. Both phones can record surround video, a depth-focused video format that’s only viewable on the Apple Vision Pro, at 1080p at 30 frames per second.

One feature that the Pro Max has over its cheaper counterpart is more sensitive audio recording thanks to four microphones, compared to the Plus’ three. Both phones offer Audio Mix, three professional-grade switches that let the phone record specific audio sources over others when recording video: In-Cage captures the person speaking in front of the camera (even if people nearby are speaking off-camera), Studio is designed for podcasters and vloggers to sound like they’re inside the soundproof walls of a studio, and Cinematic blends sounds from in front of the screen (similar to a standard movie mix).

The iPhone 16 Pro Max, unsurprisingly, has the more advanced A18 Pro chipset than the iPhone 16 Plus’s A18 silicon, though both support Apple Intelligence. The larger phone has more maximum storage, with options of 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB, while the Plus has 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB configurations. Apple hasn’t released the RAM for each model.

While the Plus measures 6.33×3.06×0.31 inches (160.9×77.8×7.8mm), the Pro Max measures 6.42×3.06×0.32 inches (163×77.6×8.25mm). That also means the smaller phone is lighter, weighing 199 grams (7.03oz), while the larger phone weighs 227 grams (7.99oz). The Pro Max has a titanium frame that comes in four colors: black, white, natural silver, and desert tan. The Plus comes in a more vibrant color range: black, white, pink, turquoise, and ultramarine blue. Both phones have an IP68 dust and water resistance rating, and both have USB-C ports.

Both phones’ displays are Super Retina XDR OLEDs with a resolution of 460 pixels per inch, so they’re equally sharp, though the larger Pro Max logically has more pixels on its screen (2868 x 1320 pixel resolution) than the relatively smaller Plus (2796 x 1290 pixel resolution). The phones reach a maximum brightness of 2,000 nits in direct sunlight, but can drop to a single nit in the dark, which helps conserve battery life.

That extra space means longer battery life (though in typical Apple fashion, we don’t have an estimated hourly usage, just exact capacity figures). The iPhone 16 Pro Max gets up to 33 hours of video playback (or up to 29 hours when streaming video), while the iPhone 16 Plus gets up to 27 hours of video playback (or up to 24 hours when streaming). Both phones have the same wired charging (up to 20W) as the previous generation, though MagSafe wireless charging has been bumped up to 25W when used with a 30W or faster charger.

Both phones run iOS 18 out of the box, and both will get Apple Intelligence when it launches in late September. Apple hasn’t revealed much more about its AI capabilities than it showed off at WWDC in June. The generative AI will supercharge Siri, offering suggestions to spice up your messages, automatically arranging photos, and offering more precise, contextual searches.

Apple has also added AI-generated emojis that you can create by sending commands – like a cowboy frog on a trampoline.

The big reveal is Visual Intelligence, Apple’s application of AI to the camera. Visual Intelligence can search for anything in the viewfinder. This is possible thanks to a new hardware feature: the Camera Control button, which is located on the right side of both phones, below the lock button. It’s capacitive and physically clickable, so you can press to turn on Visual Intelligence or tap it to trigger its secondary functionality: acting as an additional toggle for camera settings.

For example, when your camera app is open, you can swipe across it to zoom in and out or change the aperture — and it will act as an additional menu in third-party apps. Apple’s presentation showed how it works in Snap.

Likewise, the action button is now available on both premium and standard phones, replacing the ringer mute switch and acting as a customizable app shortcut. It is no longer exclusive to premium phones.

That reduces the number of premium Pro Max models compared to the Plus, making it harder to justify the $300 price difference. True, it’s bigger, has a third rear camera (telephoto), a titanium frame, and a bigger battery. But because Apple Intelligence makes its way into both phones (it doesn’t return until the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max models), the premium phones are harder to justify compared to their cheaper brethren.