what's up guys saf here on supersaf tv and welcome to the final video of 2020. quite emotional actually not really not really looking forward to 2021 but anyway this is my long-term review of the iphone 12 pro max after using it for almost two months i was fortunate enough to get this a little bit earlier than the release date and i've been using it every single day since now as always with my longer term reviews i don't go over too many specs i've already covered those in my unboxing video in this video i'm gonna be talking about my experience what i like about the iphone 12 pro max what i don't like about it and what i think can be improved so this is going to be a pretty long video but i will try to leave some time stamps down below you'll want to watch it all because i'll be covering lots of detail plus i mean it's the holidays you don't really have much else to do right no just me anyway so let's get to it now to give you some background initially about my personal usage i've been using iphones for many many years and i have two sim cards one sim card sits in my iphone and the other sim card sits in my android phone i think this gives me a pretty unique perspective because i get to use both platforms so i will be doing some brief comparisons to some features that i have experienced on the android side of things which i would also like to see on the iphone side of things but this is not going to be a comparison right so let's get to it the first thing i want to talk about is the display so the iphone 12 pro max has an excellent display it's very sharp bright vibrant love the colors and it's very color accurate as well i've not really noticed any display issues on the iphone 12 pro max and it does give you a great viewing experience especially on that larger screen it's also a very durable display you may have heard that it uses ceramic sealed ceramic shield i always get that wrong anyway apple don't even call this glass and it's supposed to be the toughest display on any smartphone now i'm not somebody who does drop tests but we've seen lots of other youtubers do drop tests and ceramic shield definitely does live up it is certainly a lot more drop resistant however it's not any more scratch resistant from what i've found so if you do want to keep your iphone in pristine condition then you might want to consider picking up a screen protector now a couple of things that i would have liked to have seen on the iphone 12 pro max display firstly a higher refresh rate screen this is currently 60 hertz you may already know that a lot of the competition have much higher refresh rates you're looking at averagely around 120 hertz which is double the refresh rate of an iphone and for those of you who are not too familiar with this it essentially gives you a much smoother viewing experience especially when you are scrolling through your feeds if you're gaming at a high refresh rate things just feel that much smoother we do have a promotion display on the ipad pros and those displays i absolutely love and although if you are coming from a previous iphone it's not really something that you're going to miss it is something that i would have liked to have seen another thing that i would have really liked to have seen on the iphone 12 pro max isn't always on display this is something that i'm used to seeing on many other devices if you have one of the recent apple watches then you may already be used to an always-on display too and essentially what's an always-on display gives you is some very useful information without actually having to physically wake the display so if i have my iphone on my desk for instance and i pop out the room for a little bit i come back if somebody's called me and i've missed that call then until i pick up the device and have a look i'm not gonna note that i've missed that call whereas if i hadn't always on display i'd be able to see maybe a small icon of any missed calls or notifications and then i could decide to pick my iphone up and that is so so convenient for me and this is an oled display so i don't think there's any technical reasons why you couldn't have it yes it would affect the battery life very slightly but it's something that i'm hoping apple can introduce with future updates right another thing a lot of people have been talking about is the notch now honestly speaking i really don't mind the notch that much yes it does look quite outdated compared to what we're seeing from the competition with small punch outs and things like that but it's something that i think you really kind of get used to after a bit and if you're coming from a previous iphone i don't think it's really something that you're gonna mind and within here of course you have face id now i've generally always liked face id it's very quick and it's very convenient however 2020 things have changed right we are all now wearing masks more and more and this is something that i find super super annoying when i'm trying to unlock my phone if i'm in the supermarket or something then i have to keep tapping in my passcode i really wish apple had introduced touch id on the iphone 12 pro and 12 pro max here on the side on the power button if we look at the recent ipad air that does have touch id within the power button and it works really really well if the iphone 12 pro max had that it would have made things so much more convenient and then you can kind of choose which you want to have right whether you want to have touch id or face id so this is something that i have definitely found frustrating over the past couple of months and it's something that i think could have been easily solved with touch id on the power button right so that's the display overall very good but definitely lots of room for improvement let's now talk about the build and design so personally speaking i really do like the design of the iphone 12 pro max i like the matte finish that we've got the back and granted the camera module is pretty much the same as what we had on the iphone 11 pro max but these flat edges are very appealing to me i was a big fan of the design of the iphone 4 4s 5 5s the flat edges i think do look super super slick but there's a couple of things about these flat edges firstly the size the iphone 12 pro max although it weighs the same as the iphone 11 pro max it is slightly bigger in terms of the height and the width and with these flat edges it just feels bigger because the iphone 11 pro max has curved edges it's definitely more comfortable to hold so this is definitely a big big boy and it's the biggest iphone that we've had you do get used to it after a bit but another thing about these edges is that we've got stainless steel now granted stainless steel is more durable compared to aluminium that we've got on the iphone 12 mini and the iphone 12 but this stainless steel frame is such a fingerprint magnet like as soon as you take your smartphone out the box it's gonna be completely covered with fingerprints literally within seconds of having it and this is something that i really do not like about this stainless steel band now you can get over this by using a case if you do want a very slim profile case then you might want to check out some cases from our video sponsor bandwag bandwidth iphone cases are made from premium italian nappa leather which is durable and sturdy while maintaining a thin and light profile bandwidth iphone cases are also 100 handcrafted in a specialized manufacturing in italy and presented a gift wrapped and packaged in a wooden box to add to that premium experience bandwag also sell lots of other products such as premium apple watch straps like the one i'm wearing here and this is made from original shell cordovan leather from the famous halloween tannery in chicago which is one of the most exclusive premium materials that the leather market offers and once again carefully handmade and gift wrapped if you want to pick up a premium case for your iphone or an apple watch strap then i will leave a link to bandwag down in the description below let's now move on to my favorite thing of the iphone 12 pro max and that is the cameras now let me just go ahead and say that the iphone 12 pro max in my opinion has the best all-round cameras on any smartphone right now and the key here is consistency lots of other smartphones out there are great and in some areas actually do better compared to the iphone 12 pro max in areas such as zoom for example but when it comes to the overall package for images and video the iphone 12 pro max is my pick and it's the smartphone that's always in my pocket and it's always reliable as expected you've got great detail excellent natural colors as well as great dynamic range a couple of things that you get on the iphone 12 pro max which you don't get on any other iphone firstly the 65 millimeter telephoto camera which is roughly about 2.5 times zoom now apple doesn't seem to be interested in zoom right we've not got any crazy amounts of zoom but 65 millimeters is excellent for portraits now a lot of you guys will already know that i'm a huge fan of portrait photography and i think the iphone 12 pro max does an excellent job 65 millimeter portraits on the iphone 12 pro max are absolutely excellent in terms of colors this can be subjective i have noticed that the iphone 12 pro max does go more towards the orange side for skin tones especially in direct sunlight but i personally don't mind it and i do prefer it to the more pale tones that you get on other smartphones another new thing that we've got on the iphone 12 pro on the 12 pro max is apple pro raw and this gives you the ability to capture raw images on your iphones and it's so so nice to have however it's not something that i think you'll be using all the time and that's because the images that you get out of the iphone are standard or excellent anyway with all of the image processing however certain situations where you might want to tweak a few things after the fact having apple pro raw is a big big advantage because you get so much more information in your images now this information does come at a cost of file size of course so pro raw images are around 10 times larger compared to standard images and i do like the fact that you've got the quick toggle within the camera app so you can't switch pro raw on and off whenever you need it because it's really not something that you're going to have on all the time the iphone 12 pro and 12 pro max also have the lidar scanner now this has a bunch of ar benefits i'm not somebody who uses ar too much but what i do like having the lidar scanner for is for low light situations because autofocus in low light thanks to the lidar scanner is very very good and also low light portraits so using the lidar scanner the iphone 12 pro and 12 pro max can actually take really good portraits in low light something that you couldn't really do before now there is a bit of a catch and that is that portraits in the low lights only look good using the primary camera at 1x so all of that stuff that i said earlier on about the 65 millimeter portraits doesn't really apply to low light portraits and that's because the telephoto camera does not have as much of a larger sensor size as the primary camera does and it also doesn't have as much of a wider aperture now let's move on to video and in my opinion i know i've said this many times before but the iphone 12 pro max is still the king when it comes to video on a smartphone the video quality that you get on here is absolutely excellent and it's very consistent across all of the cameras and this year you may have already heard that we have hdr video with dolby vision which gives you some amazing amazing results now when the iphone 12 pro max initially released if i was to try to upload a video onto the likes of instagram and twitter they would not look good at all but this has been improved with time and now if i do upload an hdr video on to one of these social media platforms it will be made into a format that is viewable across all devices we also now have sensor shift optical image stabilization on the primary camera and this gives you some amazing stabilization i believe this is the first if not one of the first smartphones with sensor shift optical image stabilization and yeah the video footage is so stable i've mounted this on my car window and it's like shaking like anything but the video footage is super super smooth now one area on the video which is not great unfortunately is 4k 60 frames a second from the front facing camera so 4k 60 frames a second from the rear-facing cameras is absolutely great but as soon as you switch to 4k 60 frames a second from the front facing camera dynamic range goes out the window highlights are completely blown out and hdr video with dolby vision is not supported at 4k 60 frames a second from the front-facing camera so this is something that i actually didn't realize until i spent some time testing the iphone 12 pro max and dynamic range from the front-facing camera at 4k 60fps was not really an issue for me on the iphone 11 pro max so i'm not sure why this is an issue on the iphone 12 pro max i hope it can be improved with a software update but overall when it comes to the cameras of the iphone 12 pro max i do think once again there are some of the best on the market right now and i don't think you're going to be disappointed now let's talk a little bit about the performance so the iphone 12 pro max as you probably already know is powered by apple's latest a14 bionic chip and this time we have 5g now as expected performance is absolutely great on the iphone 12 pro max it's super smooth and i think more so if you are going to be keeping this for a few years you can be confident that a couple of years down the line this is still going to be performing very very well we've also got some more ram this year on the iphone 12 pro max compared to last year and that should help it a little bit more with multitasking however it's still not perfect i'll give you an example i'm trying to upload a video to my story i can press the upload button if i leave the app and go into another app then that video will not finish uploading until i go back into instagram this is not a problem that i've had on say my samsung galaxy note 20 ultra i can leave something uploading go do whatever else i want and it will still carry on uploading in the background now i'm not sure if this is a hardware limitation if the iphone 12 pro max needs more ram or if it's something that needs to be improved in software but it still has some way to go now speaking of the software we of course have the latest ios 14 and i really do like ios 14.
i love the introduction of the widgets that we now have and i know android users are going to be going crazy in the comments saying we've had this for many many years that's absolutely fine it's nice to have the flexibility that you have now and if you are somebody that's traditionally been on android and you're considering moving to an iphone i think now with ios 14 you're gonna find that transition much easier but there are still lots of things on ios 14 which i think can be improved my main thing is one hand usability i don't think that space is utilized best on ios 14 i mean look at this we've got such a massive screen but look how much wasted space there is in between icons right now i know apple likes to keep things consistent so across all of the iphones you have this uh four column grid but uh it just means that i can't get as much as i would like and look how high these icons are now granted i could always use reachability but i don't want to keep doing that right i like to have my most used icons along the bottom and previously it was even worse because what i would have to do is i'd have to put apps which i at least use all the way at the top so those are right at the top and if i do need to use them i can just use reachability but i'd have my most used apps towards the bottom now with widgets i can kind of space these out so i can have my widgets at the top so you can see here that i've got the clock and i've got the weather i like to leave those at the top because i don't really need to interact with those i can just see those at a glance and then my apps that i use most are towards the bottom but again look at the spacing here i think this could be utilized much much better now let's talk a little bit about 5g so all of the new iphones come with 5g which in my opinion is absolutely great having 5g means that you have future-proofed your smartphone so you might not be able to take advantage of it right away and that's something that i have found right now during lockdown i've not been able to get out too much and in my personal area there is very minimal 5g coverage so it's not something that i've been able to take full advantage of but whenever i have been in town or out and about then having 5g means i get some very very fast speeds so yeah although you may not be able to take full advantage of the 5g speeds depending on your area this is something that i think is nice to have to future-proof your device now let's talk about the battery life and the whole charging situation so the iphone 12 pro max has got excellent battery life i would say it's almost the same as the battery life that i was getting on my iphone 11 pro max so i'm getting through the full day with around six hours of screen on time if not more having said that my usage has mostly been at home on wi-fi not using too much 5g because we are in lockdown but regardless i think the iphone 12 pro max if you are somebody who's a heavy user this will be the iphone to go for thanks to that larger battery and the better battery life compared to the other iphones and when it comes to charging you guys may already know that apple does not include a charger out of the box now apple have said this is to save on carbon emissions and i'm all for that and honestly speaking personally i generally mostly use wireless charging anyway and i have wireless chargers across my house the iphone 12 pro max does support wireless charging which is great but here's the thing right unless you're coming to the iphone 12 pro max from an iphone 11 pro or an iphone 11 pro max you are likely to only have a slow 5 watt charger you're not going to have the fast 18 watt charger which was only included in the iphone 11 pro and the iphone 11 pro max box and generally speaking most people are on a two-year upgrade cycle most people i know anyway will usually have a two-year contract and then upgrade and if you are one of those people again you're gonna have an older 5 watt charger which will charge the iphone 12 pro max up fine it's just gonna be very very slow and the other factor you have to consider is magsafe so magsafe i'm a fan i do really like magsafe and i like the convenience of it as well if you've used wireless charging before i'm sure you've had this situation where you are going to sleep you drop your smartphone on the wireless charging pad you wake up and it's completely dead and that's because the smartphone hasn't been properly aligned to the wireless charging mac so it's not been able to get any charge at all and that's super annoying with magsafe you don't have to worry about that because it just snaps on very quickly and conveniently but here's the thing with magsafe if you buy a magsafe charger which costs around 40 pounds it does not come with a power brick so if you want faster charging on your iphone 12 pro max or even if you want magsafe charging you're going to have to get a usbc fast charger separately granted this is cheaper compared to what we've had in previous years so it's about 20 pounds now which is pretty reasonable in my opinion but regardless you're gonna have to still buy that separately now that in my opinion kind of cancels out a lot of the saved carbon emissions that apple claims because let's say even if half the people that buy a new iphone 12 pro or 12 pro max have to then go out and buy a usbc fast charger separately what about all the carbon emissions that are coming from those chargers that are being walked separately right i'm sure they cancel out a lot of those claimed savings that apple have presented now i know i've gone on about this quite a bit but it's just something that i had to address what do you guys think do let me know in the comments below do you mind not having a charger out of the box of the iphone 12 pro max now one thing that might actually make up for the fact that you don't get a charger included out of the box with the iphone 12 pro max is the fact that it's actually priced cheaper at least in the uk compared to what the iphone 11 pro max came in at so you're looking at a saving of 50 pounds and you do get double the base storage 128 gigabytes instead of the 64 that we got with the base iphone 11 pro max last year and if we compare the 256 gigabyte or 512 gigabytes variants of the iphones then you're actually going to be paying 100 pounds less in the uk or 50 less in the us compared to the iphone 11 pro max last year based on that even if you want to buy a magsafe charger with an 18 watt power brick you'd still be saving some money compared to what you would have paid the same time last year on the iphone 11 pro max so in terms of pricing i think apple have actually priced the new iphones pretty well this year compared to last year and that is the iphone 12 pro max overall i think this is an excellent smartphone and if you do want the best that apple has to offer then this is the smartphone to go for it will be the iphone that's going to be staying in my pocket for the coming year especially for those cameras what do you think of the iphone 12 pro max do drop me a comment below let me know your thoughts i hope you enjoyed this video and found it useful i did try to cover as much detail as possible if you did then do it that thumbs up for me and if you haven't already and you want to see more content like this then be sure to subscribe and hit that bell icon we've got loads more new quality content coming in 2021 thanks for watching this is saf on supersaf tv and i'll see you next time
