iPhone 16 Pro Max vs. iPhone 15 Pro Max

Whoever comes in the Apple ecosystem, stays in the Apple ecosystem, right? If so, you are maybe looking to upgrade your older iPhone but seeing those lucrative iPhone 15 Pro Max price tags makes you wonder whether the extra few hundred bucks for the newer iPhone 16 Pro Max are justifiable.

Table of Contents:

For starters, you can compare the complete specs sheets or directly continue with our editor’s assessment in the following text.

Even though Apple has officially discontinued the iPhone 15 Pro Max, you can still find some units lying around for about €/$400-450 less. And let’s be honest, iPhone upgrades have gotten pretty stale lately. Let’s find out if Apple was able to spice things up this year.

Size comparison

Design-wise, there’s little to no change in the iPhone 16 Pro Max, compared to the 15 Pro Max. However, the newer Max grew in size and added a little bit of weight. The weight part isn’t as noticeable, but since the 16 Pro Max is now built around a huge 6.9-inch display, albeit with thinner bezels, it’s noticeably taller and a tad wider too.

There’s no meaningful difference in the “building blocks” either. Sure, the 16 Pro Max uses newer generation Ceramic Shield glass for its front and back, but we doubt this would tip the scale for anyone. Both handsets are exceptionally built and boast IP68 ingress protection.

The iPhone 16 Pro Max this year comes with a slightly larger screen diagonal and even slimmer bezels. The resolution is also higher to maintain the same pixel density.

Other than that, the 15 Pro Max has the same quality screen. They both support the same HDR standards (up to Dolby Vision). They both peak at around 1,700-1,800 nits of max brightness, according to our tests, and they can both go up to 120Hz.

Battery life

The already excellent iPhone 15 Pro Max battery life is topped by the 16 Pro Max battery endurance score. The difference in the overall score is rather minimal, but as we look closely at the results, we see that the newer Pro Max gains some extra runtime on the 4G call and web browsing tests.

Admittedly, the difference isn’t huge, but if battery life is utmost importance to you, then the 16 Pro Max is the right choice.

Charging speed

Unfortunately, there’s no upgrade in the charging department for yet another year. The iPhone 16 Pro Max charges for roughly the same time as its predecessor, according to our tests. Apple doesn’t advertise the rated max charging power but our tests clearly show about the same charging rate in the first 15 to 30 minutes and then slows down significantly.

The older 15 Pro Max charges from 0 to 100% in 109 minutes, while the 16 Pro Max does that 8 minutes slower. The slightly longer charging time probably due to the larger capacity.

Speaker test

The most recent 16 Pro Max comes with improved loudspeaker quality without being quieter. They offer the same level of loudness but at higher quality.

Music tracks sound more natural, warmer and with more depth to them thanks to the more pronounced bass. Interestingly enough, that doesn’t seem to affect vocals in a bad way. The vocals and highs are just as clean as on the 15 Pro Max, maybe even cleaner.

Performance

As with every new iPhone, the 16 Pro Max offers newer, faster and more efficient chipset. It has the Apple A18 Pro on board with a hexa-core CPU and it’s based on the 3nm manufacturing process. The Apple A17 Pro powering up the 15 Pro Max has similar specs – hexa-core CPU with hexa-core GPU.

The new A18 Pro chipset also has considerably better AI capabilities thanks to its 16-core NPU.

Memory configurations remain unchanged with both devices starting at 8GB/256GB and going all the way up to 8GB/1TB.

Benchmark performance

Even though the changes may sound subtle, the 16 Pro Max offers almost 26% better CPU performance as per Geekbench 6, about 27% higher combined performance according to AnTuTu 10 and outpaces the 15 Pro Max in GPU-heavy workloads by 27%.

Additionally, the 16 Pro Max fares better in our CPU and GPU throttle tests, showing better sustained performance.

Overall, the performance leap is far from trivial but will likely remain underutilized if you are not into mobile gaming that much.

Camera comparison

The iPhone 16 Pro Max brings a notable upgrade to its camera system with the addition of a new HDR adjustment setting and a Camera Control button feature, though the latter remains incomplete at launch and with rather questionable utility.

The biggest shift comes with the ultrawide camera, where the previous 12MP sensor has been replaced by a 48MP (1/2.55″, 0.7µm) Quad Bayer-type sensor. Despite this increase in resolution, the physical size of the ultrawide sensor remains about the same as before, indicating a 1/2.55″ sensor size like its predecessor. While these upgrades push the ultrawide to new heights, the selfie camera, featuring a 12MP sensor with PDAF and a 23mm f/1.9 lens, carries over from the previous generation without any major changes. Video recording capabilities across the system include up to 4K at 120fps for the main camera and up to 4K at 60fps for the ultrawide, telephoto, and front cameras.

Image quality

As the minor hardware changes entail, there’s little to no difference of how the two iPhones shoot their stills and videos. We struggle to find any notable difference in the photos and videos when it comes to quality, processing, etc.

iPhone 16 Pro Max: 0.6 • 1x • 2x • 5x

Phone 15 Pro Max: 0.6 • 1x • 2x • 5x

Selfie samples: iPhone 16 Pro Max • iPhone 15 Pro Max

After some pixel-peeping, though, we did find a barely noticeable difference between the ultrawide cameras, which is expected given that the only hardware change is in this department. The newer iPhone seems to produce slightly warmer stills and with brighter highlights, but once again, we doubt that most people would notice. It’s a trivial change.

iPhone 16 Pro Max: 0.6 • 1x • 2x • 5x

iPhone 15 Pro Max: 0.6x • 1x • 2x • 5x

Video quality

The same goes for the video recording. We see no apparent difference in how these two phones record videos except for the ultrawide where the 16 Pro Max produces clips with slightly warmer color temperature.

iPhone 16 Pro Max daylight video samples: 0.5x • 1x • 2x • 5x

iPhone 15 Pro Max daylight video samples: 0.5x • 1x • 2x • 5x

iPhone 16 Pro Max low-light video samples: 0.5x • 1x • 2x • 5x

iPhone 15 Pro Max low-light video samples: 0.5x • 1x • 2x • 5x

Verdict

So is the iPhone 16 Pro Max better than its predecessor? Most certainly, yes. Objectively speaking, the 16 Pro Max has slightly better battery life, considerably higher performance, nicer speakers and since it’s a newer phone, expect one extra year of software support. The 16 Pro Max also has a Camera Control button, which left us with mixed feelings but some users like it.

But is it around €500 better than the iPhone 15 Pro Max? Probably not. If you can find a 15 Pro Max on the store shelves, you will get roughly the same user experience for a lot less. We find it hard to justify the huge price gap with the rather modest hardware upgrades, especially since there are no gains in the camera department.