so this model I'm going to be brutally honest
about the 15 Pro Max give you my thoughts on it as a 14 pro Max user I'll let you know is it
worthwhile upgrading uh you're getting okay the new titanium build which is very nice you get
the five times Optical camera the new chipset type c Port action button and some other minor
things but I'll give you a spoiler here all of that does not add up to you forking out getting a
new model because you really I don't think you're gaining enough and you'll see why in this first
impressions I think this is more like an iPhone 14s Pro Max it's not really like a whole new
model despite all the minor little tweaks and changes as you'll see so this part's going to be
really quick there's no charger included because Apple wants to make more money they want you
to go and buy one that's the reason not for saving the world or the environment whatever
they say that it's just an excuse it reduces their shipping cost too because look at how
thin the box is so they can fit like two more in the size that would be just one before so
that's one of the big reasons uh there is my white version I got because I think it's just
going to look a lot better with the white and the titanium I want the natural titanium type c
so they've only moved over to type c of course because the EU forced them to do that and we've
got some stickers in here so well one of them I don't know why you'd want to put that on the
rear of your car and give Apple free advertising and tell everyone that you own an Apple product I
don't know why that's necessary so some paperwork and of course our SIM tray tool so yeah that's
it nothing else no charger no case included speaking of cases if you want an exceptionally
good case that's really light and thin then check out the mag easy case 4.
This is from pataka who
are sponsoring this video now this one is very thin I'll just show you how it looks it's only 20
grams and it's only 0.95 millimeters the thickness of it so it's magsafe compatible I'll show you
that in a second so to install it very simple just slot your phone in like that locks into place and
because it's so thin it's not adding a lot of bulk at all to my iPhone 15 Pro Max here now they've
got a raised lip here around the edge to protect your camera so you can see their side on that
when you place this down on a table the lenses will not be touching that table so it offers
great protection there too so we have access to our power on button there the new type c port
at the bottom all of the the speakers there and the buttons on the left hand side all accessible
along with the top so it's not adding a lot of bulk and it's only that 20 grams more too which is
great feels really good so it has a skin friendly texture to it and I'll just check out here a MAG
safe compatible accessory so this is a wireless charger that fits on there really nice it's
not affecting the magnet performance so that's still on there really strong that is not going
anywhere in fact a bit hard for me to get it off so if you are interested in one of these awesome
cases here from pataka do check out the link in the description of this video alright so before I
cover the new design of it and the changes I want to have a look at the weight difference compared
to my old 14 pro Max so the old 14 pro Max it's a bit chunky bit heavy it's 254 grams and the newer
now titanium frame model is 222 grams so that is a welcomed change here that they've dropped a
lot of weight from it moving over to Titanium okay so here it is the 15 Pro Max on the right
and then on the left is the 14 pro Max so at first glance they look identical slightly Slimmer bezels
but we still have the same 6.7 inch screen it's a very nice screen I've got no really no criticism
of it at all it's very good apart from when the phone gets hot and when using the cameras a lot
it will them down so you can see this is the 14 pro Max now in direct sunlight and it fares really
well as long as you don't have it out in direct sunlight for very long or you're not shooting 4K
video then it will dim a little bit eventually seems to be holding up a lot better than the 14
pro Max which can dim down so dim when I record 4K video you can hardly even see it so side by
side you notice the difference in the weight there and we still have that terrible ugly looking
Notch there's no other way around it it's ugly and it should not be there and it's it's going to be
I'm sure with the iPhone 16 or 17 are wearing it whenever Apple will finally move over to just a
single cut out like my s23 old Ultra they will claim then that they're basically inventing it
or whatnot and dynamic Islands oh yeah okay don't get me started on that I just think it's kind of
pointless it's handy for some things maybe like the timer when you see it there but anyway what
this phone really needs and all phones should be something more like this so this is a very old
phone now this is the k30 pro zoom and it's got no Notch look at that wow the bezels are almost about
the same as the 14 pro Max but anyway enough about that Notch shouldn't be there it's an eyesore
and a crime against design for modern mobiles so the frame you see the difference here with the
titanium you do its rounded edges here and there's a bit of a texture to it so this is why I went
for the natural look with the white I got like the gold here with the 14 pro Max I just I like
them and I think I just wanted a bit of a change because I used to always get the gray ones and
sometimes they chip so that's why it's a power button that's all in the same location nothing
has changed there the big and final change that oh I've been waiting for for so long is yes USB type
c and it's 3.0 I'll take that it's 10 gigabits per second I'm not defending them it should be faster
it should even be Thunderbolt four Thunderbolt 3 or USB 4 spec would be amazing with this but
they have claimed like apple that they've done this change here for the good of their users in
fact they've only done it because they've been forced to by the EU they wanted to have the same
charging port across all mobiles and this is what forced Apple's hand to do this change so goodbye
lightning Port there finally gotten rid of that so speakers down the bottom we have the earpiece
speakers they all sound the same to me there are no changes there so now we look here at our left
side so we've got now this which is our action button and I do like this I think it's great you
can just keep it as going into the silent mode if you hold it or you can assign it to camera which
I've done so I'll just show you now when I tap and hold that it's going to launch the camera and
I can also use this as a shutter so I can tap that but it's unfortunately it's not a two-stage button
that's the only thing I would have loved to have seen that that means it could be used first to
focus then take the shot making it more like a camera that would have been brilliant hopefully
someone is going to do that soon but I love the fact they've done this change because now a lot
that's face ID working here for me a lot of Brands will now be adding action buttons to their phones
too and it's been around before with Android this is not something new I've reviewed some of those
Doogie phones that have a quick launch button that you can assign to different applications so
Apple has not invented this but because they've done it more brands are now going to add that
mark my words okay so front-facing cameras they are the same they're just the 12 megapixel one
and it's that if 1.9 it takes good selfies and portraits and the best part about the camera with
I think with apple is that you get really good Vlog footage out of this and I'll show you some of
those video samples later on in the video so we do have the new chipset inside here it is the a17 and
that is just a three nanometer it's the a17 pro and this is okay welcome change Big Boost in GPU
performance we also have now two gigabytes of RAM instead of the six we have on the 14 pro Max which
is good that's another great change and then we've got well the same 12 megapixel Ultra wide with
some tweaks to it because it's now got that new coating it's supposed to cut down on Reflections
I'll test that later out with some night shots probably not in this video but maybe some camera
comparisons 48 megapixel really unchanged but it now has the new uh of course Optical image
stabilization with the San it's a shift it's supposed to be now improved and then the zoom
camera so this is 12 megapixels it's five times Optical periscopic and this guy here can beat
it of course that's the s23 ultra anyway and for Apple it's something new and this is the big key
reason why I should go for the 15 Pro Max and not just the 15 Pro because you get the zoom camera
here so it's still got uh the scanner 3D scanner there too as well and the Flash all that kind of
looks exactly the same so there they are side by side pretty hard to tell that much of a difference
but they've spaced it out slightly and of course old cases will not work on the new phone because
it's slightly smaller and those camera positions well they've changed slightly okay so this screen
as I mentioned it's very good and it is an OLED it's 120 hertz HDR 10 supports Dolby vision and in
high brightness mode can get up to 2000 nits and typically the top brightness is about a thousand
I cannot criticize the screen at all it's very good I love it it's really good and I would say
it's it's just as good really as my Samsung s23 Ultra screen which I also love but I prefer the
size of this one it's really a bit larger it has the curvature to the screen though on the edges
that I don't particularly like I just love the fact that the iPhone screens at least are flat and
this is one thing I've got to give Apple a lot of credit to is they've kept with the flat screen
I'm so glad they didn't put a curved one in here at all so performance wise going from the 14 pro
Max with the a16 uh bionic is that what they call it yeah and then the a17 pro that you're going
to notice while really absolutely no difference it's only in synthetic benchmarks you will see a
difference that's the only area so if you people say in their videos that oh you can tell how much
faster it is you can't okay you really cannot so if you run those benchmarks you see there's a
nice bump in the GPU score so this here is a geekbench 6 with the GPU this is the metal score
so you can see it's gone out well not quite 5 000 points but a lot that's a lot for GPU increase
so big improvements there and they focused a lot on that in the presentation the Triple A gaming
is going to be there and it's going to be great and amazing on your phone yeah and you will notice
the difference in games probably not uh but yeah it'll be able to do a lot of things like the
ray tracing and all that sort of stuff so the CPU side of things here this is another big step
up look at that single core score there wow that is absolutely amazing almost 3 000 points for
geekbench six and that multi-core score there over seven thousand that's a nice bump up very
nice bump up especially that single core score uh and again you're not going to actually see or
notice this just in day-to-day use and with all the games that your standard games that are out
that have not been optimized for the new chipset you're not going to see any difference at all
in that area nope I'm sorry but that's true you won't but if you run these fancy benchmarks
you will see a difference and just to show you how powerful it really is the new a17 Pro well
this is the Snapdragon 8 gen 2.
Look at that difference single core score okay it's just 1911
this is almost 3 000 and the multi-core score so that is just completely demolishing the top
dog with Android so that is impressive very good performance out of that three nanometer
chip now all right so let's go into the camera here because I know a lot of people are interested
about this and I wanted to point out some of the very misleading marketing from Apple so they're
talking about our main camera 48 megapixels being like three cameras in one and the whole
setup on the rear being seven cameras so they say the ultra wide there we go that's one camera
then you've got your 24 millimeter 14 megapixel camera that's two cameras then if you tap again
28 millimeters that's now your third camera and then 35 millimeters that's your fourth camera
and there you see what's happening in two times okay that's uh all right it's just getting
ridiculous and then you've got your five times Optical so uh stating the obvious here that that's
a fixed 24 millimeter focal length equivalent and it's the same sensor and that's just digital Zoom
so and I like they do do this okay so it goes 28 millimeter equivalent or emulated simulated
and then the 1.2 times digital so it is good that they're showing it later on because a lot of
people came away from the event going wow it has seven cameras on the rear of it take that everyone
else that how can you get three cameras out of just one lens so it's marketing that I think and
believe is very misleading here I'm not a huge fan of that so video uh no 8K video and a lot of
people are defending that decision I personally don't need and I don't think most people will want
8K video in their phone but I tell you what Just for future proofing I shoot a lot of 8K video with
with my s23 ultra and why is that well some of the clips I shoot of my daughters they may be watching
it in years to come and I want it to be the top quality 8K just a bit sharper you can also crop
8K a lot more than you can 4K and I think it's time that if the competition has 8K then yeah
apple should really get it there's no excuse to start defending Apple's decision to not go with 8K
that'll be something for next year they're saving that spec for next year probably when we'll get 8K
video eventually so you do have a lot of settings and of course with apple you need to go into the
menu system here which is always a bit of a mess but they keep camera near the top part because
it is a a native app and all the third party apps are you know they're they're way down there and
oops where is it where is camera here it is okay so you've got a lot of options here there's some
new options so cinematic footage you can shoot at uh your 4K 30 there too slow motion uh no changes
in that and this is our normal video that goes to 4K 60.
So you get a lot of different options
you've got enhanced stabilization there you've got the HDR video you have the pro res HDR now which
is very good and you can record onto external storage uh you're going to need a fast storage
for that too as well of course so there's a lot of little changes little tweaks and things at all
welcome they're all great and you can see here we've got an option for the main camera to default
it if you wanted 35 millimeters as default then you can do that and additional lenses you can just
go and disable that so my little nitpick of it is very misleading and if I personally don't like
it sure I know guys in the comments just go and disable it and I certainly will because I will not
be using that it's just digital Zoom uh portraits and photo mode so that's an automatic thing that
it'll pop up when you're looking at someone's face or even an animal if you want to automatically
take a portrait so a lot of that is all pretty straightforward there's some my little tweaks
and changes and of course that new Nano coating anti-reflective anti-glare uh thing that compound
that they've applied to the lenses to try and cut back on that annoying lens glare and the effect
that you see a lot of times it looks like UFOs in the sky when you're recording lights now the
software experience of the whole thing has been um a little bit Troublesome so when I first
started out I normally transfer from my old 14 pro to the new and it's normally very seamless
it's great works all fine but on iOS 17.0.1 I ran into difficulty and I had to just go in without
doing the transfer I had to download and get the patch first but when I first tried it I got stuck
at just zero it wouldn't update it all so it took me a long time to get set up and I've noticed
some little visual glitches here and there so the ROM the firmware here iOS definitely needs a
few updates it's not off to a great start for me it's uh it's well it's looking quite rough to
be honest but I'm sure they'll get there with some updates in a few weeks okay so over two
video performance now with our iPhone 15 Pro Max the front-facing camera 12 megapixels F
1.9 same sensor as before and I do find their Vlog footage is really good this is why a lot
of people switch and go over to iPhone I think for the front facing footage compared to some
of the competitors out there no improvement to the microphone so far what I've been listening
to it seems to be exactly the same to my ears as my 14 pro Max no real change there so now on
a bit of sunlight you can see the sensor seems to be adjusting well to this and stabilization is
very good as they walk around when you're doing it live on the screen it looks like it's shaking all
over the place so it's a little bit misleading but when you see it on your PC or you play it back
on the phone it does look really good but let's have a look at the rear cameras now where there
of course are some changes that I pointed out Ultra wide Camera 12 megapixels basically
the same although apparently they've made some tweaks to it but who knows I'll have
to test it out with comparisons to really see so stabilization is good probably hearing a
bit of wind noise now so this is our one times and your Concord you can record in 4k 30 and 60
and you've got your prores HDR now too but no 8K video not that I'm really missing that I don't
think it actually needs it but it'll probably overheat what competitors do offer it like
Samsung a23 Ultra new video this is two times digital still using the main 48 megapixel camera
here and this is now five times periscopic camera and I can see now there's someone up there
stabilization is looking very good here as a point now I'm just going to walk a little bit to test
that stabilization okay there's rocking around a little bit which is understandable as I move
along so I'll go back to two times now so there's a bit of a gap here from the two times better than
the five but that transition is looks pretty good it's quite fast and back to the ultra wide now so
what do you think of this video quality I think it looks pretty good but I really see no difference
from the 14 pro Max the only difference is this just having that five times optical zoom if you
want to get in really nice and close to things well you can now without it looking all pixelated
and terrible now I walk by a little bit more zoom see what that looks like this is now
seven times eight take it up to ten ten yeah there's a bit a lot more noise I can
see coming into this they're not looking as good still that stabilization is very good the
quality at 10 times digital yeah that's so great now this is what I really wanted to find out
it wasn't going to fix this lens flare where it looks like you've got almost uh UFOs and flying
around in the sky well no you can see the lamps are reflecting all over the place here I don't see
any difference at all compared to the 14 pro Max maybe slightly no no look at it there and it's
because it's still well this is still a tiny bit of daylight left but look at it reflecting
all over the place no it's not fixed and apple I don't know what they're doing but they need
to partner up with Zeiss Zeiss have a very good t-star coating that almost eliminates this issue
that the iPhone still has I can't believe it how pathetic is this so when you're taking a normal
shot here so this is a 24 millimeter the main camera looks good lots of details and this is the
five times Optical and I find it's got a little bit of over sharpening a little bit of noise to
it as well but not bad my cat very here again with the main camera this time and zooming in a little
bit disappointed with the quality of this one it almost looks digital and now it was five times
and I don't know why it came out like that so this is our main camera again looking good so in
daylight here the five times optical zoom camera does a much better job but I do notice again some
noise some over sharpening over processing this is five times Optical of a seagull and I decided
to take it up to then a 10 times digital which is okay but yes you do notice there's more sharpening
a little bit more noise to it fantastic photo here of this Hibiscus flower so lots of detail it's
not clipping the colors either portrait photos so no real difference to the 14 pro Max they
still look very good reasonably good stitching you can see as I zoom in here now with this shot
this is the five times not bad portraits from the front-facing camera really good stitching in this
one I do like it a little bit warm the tones but that's normal for them Ultra wide camera here I'm
noticing no difference at all compared to the 14 pro Max this is now low light so again seems just
like the 14 pro Max no real difference to my eyes this shot did not come out very well Vera the
white balance is off a bit of noise to it and finally that is yes the five times Optical camera
not looking good at all in low light so there we go I'll cut to the chase here it's not worth the
upgrade at all we get a nice new Flash type c Port wow Apple that's just amazing new technology
you've had it in your tablets for so long why did you take so long to bring it into the iPhone well
it's just Revenue laziness who knows what it was just to increase their revenues not having to swap
over to uh new type C stock they wanted to use the lightning ports but it was the EU that forced
them to this change and it's a welcome change and well done the EU for forcing this that you
know all mobile phones and Tech has to have the same kind of plug so we can all use the same
kind of charger speaking of charges of course not included Samsung copied Apple not including
it at all increasing their profits cutting down on their shipping costs it's all about that it's
not about saving the environment and what about that five times optical zoom camera it's okay um
it can take some really nice shot I see a bit of over sharpening a little bit over processing and
a lot of people I think would still prefer the three times at least for portrait Setters I would
personally because I find five times is too close three was the kind of sweet spot and then
don't get me started on that misleading false advertising claiming it's got seven cameras
on the rear because they're counting Ultra wide the ultrawide's macro ability is two cameras all
right fair enough but then the 24 millimeter 48 megapixel main camera saying it's three cameras
in one because oh it does 28 millimeters and it can also do 35 millimeters but it's the same
fixed lens of course which is the 24 millimeter equivalent that's not changing so it's just a
crop it's digital it's a little bit misleading and then there's that big gap between going from
the 24 millimeter to then our five times optical zoom camera in between there's going to be all
digital relying on that main camera now we do have the new prores HDR that is great we've got
the new automatic portrait sensing the action button is another great thing but these are all
just minor things the new titanium case very nice it's superb the build quality and finish of
this is excellent it feels really good in hand I think one of the best phones that I've handled
and a flat screen that is brilliant I hope they keep with flat screens I don't really like curved
screens me personally I know everyone's different it's all subjective and the notch yeah it's still
ugly and it should not be there that Notch and I hope that Apple eventually gets rid of that I'm
sure they will and that really is the gist of it it's not worth the upgrade if you're coming
from a 13 Pro max if you're coming from a 13 Pro or a 14 pro 14 pro Max it's only worth
the upgrade if you really need type c and you really need a five times optical zoom camera
the chipset yes amazing performance the fastest out there but I'm telling you now that you will
not notice this difference in current games and in current workloads and just using your phone
day to day if you've got the 14 pro like I do Max you're here and you use the other you can tell
absolutely no difference whatsoever so you're not going to notice that but again it's all good to
have that extra performance so there we go that is my honest First Impressions my take on the new
iPhone 15 Pro Max thanks a lot for watching I may be back with a review if people do want to see
that so let me know in the comments and in that full review I'll cover thermals battery life and
a few other things that are missing in this video
