Introduction
Apple just dropped its latest iPhones and this is the most premium one of the bunch, the iPhone 17 Pro Max. A lot has changed here. So, is this the best iPhone for you to get in 2025? I’m Will Go for GSM Arena and let’s find out in our iPhone 17 Pro Max review. [Music] This video is sponsored by UG Green. More on that in a bit.
Design and Build Quality
So, here it is. The iPhone 17 Pro Max. After generations of minor updates, Apple has finally decided to mix things up in a big way. The phone features a brand new aluminum body, a new chipset and vapor chamber for improved performance, a larger battery with faster charging, and a unique 2 TB storage option. Apple didn’t forget about the cameras either. There’s a new 48 megap telephoto camera as well as a new 18 megapixel selfie cam, but it’s the design of the new Pro Max that’s really turning heads.
Display and Visual Experience
This year, the iPhone Pro models have an aluminum unibody rather than a glass back. Though there is still ceramic shield glass covering a large portion of it. This creates a dramatic contrast between this glass and the aluminum around the cameras and frame. The frame is rounded and the phone is comfy to hold. It’s just as large as last year’s model, but a tiny bit heavier at 233 g. Apple claims it switched to aluminum because it’s lighter and better at heat dissipation, but this is a bit of a 180 compared to before where it hyped up steel and titanium frames for those premium phones.
Durability and Protection
Aluminum is not as hard as those other materials, making dents and scratches a concern over time. In fact, early adopters have already found the camera island readily picks up scratches, even without being subjected to very harsh treatment. There’s been no change in the ingress protection here. As before, the iPhone 17 Pro Max is IP68 rated against dust and water submersion all the way to a depth of 6 m.
Display Performance and Features
The display of the iPhone 17 Pro Max is a 6.9 in OLED panel with a high resolution and a dynamic 120 Hz refresh rate that all matches the previous 16 Pro Max. But now you get new ceramic shield glass 2 protection with anti-reflective coating. This means reflections aren’t as harsh compared to previous generations, improving legibility out in the sun.
Brightness and Visibility
When it comes to brightness, with our standard testing procedure, we achieved a little over 800 nits with the manual brightness slider. And when it boosted in auto brightness mode, the brightness maxed out at a thousand nits. However, the display is able to light up smaller patches to much higher brightness to improve contrast, and together with the anti-glare coating, the screen is perfectly usable outdoors.
ProMotion and Display Technology
The screen’s refresh rate behavior is the same as before. Apple calls this feature prootion. The display uses a high refresh rate of up to 120 hertz to smooth out movements like swiping and scrolling, and it can drop down as low as one herz when idling to save energy. You get no control over its behavior whatsoever, though. The display looks very good overall, as you’d expect. It’s quite sharp at 460 PPI.
Dynamic Island and Face ID
It’s contrasty and consistent when it comes to the colors. And you get support for HDR10 and Dolby Vision video playback. The pill-shaped cutout for the selfie cam does take up some screen space, but it’s not as distracting here as on the iPhones with smaller displays. This cutout houses both the selfie cam and a 3D TOF sensor, which enables Apple’s secure Face ID.
Audio and Speakers
For audio, the iPhone 17 Pro Max has stereo speakers. The speakers scored a good mark on our loudness test, a step back from the previous model score of very good. The sound quality has changed too, but we experienced good bass and treble here.
Storage and Action Key
Just like last year, you can get the Pro Max with 256 gigs, 512 gigs, or a terabyte of storage on board. And new this year is an even higher storage tier, a whole 2 TB. And there’s again a hardware action key. You can use it to place a phone on ring or silent, or choose from a number of predefined actions to assign to it. You can even set up your own custom shortcuts.
Performance and Chipset
A new flagship iPhone gets a new, more powerful chipset. This year, it’s called the Apple A19 Pro. It promises better RAW performance, and on top of that, the iPhone 17 Pro Max gets 12 gigs of RAM compared to the 8 gigs on last year’s model.
Thermal Management and Cooling
The iPhone 17 Pro Max also features a new Apple designed vapor chamber plate, which together with the aluminum body is meant to improve cooling and reduce thermal throttling. However, in our stress tests, we actually observed more throttling here than we did on last year’s model.
Battery Life and Charging
The iPhone 17 Pro Max’s battery capacity is a bit larger this year. It’s now 4,832 mAh for the variant with a physical SIM slot and 5,088 mAh for the ESIM only variant. Our model has a physical SIM and yet even with this smaller capacity, we measured outstanding battery life.
Charging Improvements
Apple has also improved the charging this time around by switching to a new charging standard, power delivery 3.2, which uses something called AVS. With a compatible adapter, we were able to charge the 17 Pro Max from 0 to 65% in half an hour, and a full charge took an hour and 12 minutes.
UG Green Sponsor Segment
Speaking of charging, here’s a word from this video sponsor, UG Green. The UG Green Mag Flow magnetic power bank is a compact and convenient way to keep your iPhone topped up through the day.
Software and Interface
All of the new iPhones come with Apple’s new version of iOS. is called iOS 26. Even though the previous version was iOS 18, iOS 26 brings a number of changes, but the most notable is the new liquid glass design language.
Camera Overview
And now, the iPhone 17 Pro Max’s cameras, which include the same 48 megapixel main and ultrawide cameras as before. The big change is a 48 megapixel 4x telephoto cam, which replaces last year’s 5x telephoto, which had a 12 megapixel sensor.
Selfie Camera Features
Apple has come up with a new 18 megapixel autofocusing selfie cam this time around with a uniquely shaped sensor. This new multi-aspect sensor has a special ability.
Main Camera Performance
Now, let’s talk about the rear cameras. Starting with the main one, the photos are very likable as the colors and contrast seem a bit more expressive this year.
Telephoto and Ultrawide Cameras
Moving on to the new fourx telephoto camera. Its shots are good, but they’re certainly not pin sharp and they have a heavily processed rendition of fine textures. The ultrawide cam does a good job, about the same as last year.
Video Recording Quality
The iPhone 16 Pro Max can record video in up to 4K at 60 fps with all of its cameras, and the main cam can do 120 fps slow-mo, too.
Final Verdict
So, there you have it. the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Apple has chosen to switch up the design this time around. And while some may see it as a breath of fresh air, others might miss the clean look of the previous model.
Conclusion
It’s overall a solid iPhone, and if you’re after the latest and greatest from Apple, it’s worth considering. Thanks for watching, guys. If you’re looking for alternatives, you can check out our reviews of the iPhone 16 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. Let us know what you think and I’ll see you on the next one.
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