iPhone 12 Pro Max Review: 5 Months With The Beast!

Alright, this has been put off for far too long already. I had every intention of doing a longer term review of the iPhone 11 Pro Max, mainly because every other phone review that we've done on the channel has always been like one to two weeks, maybe three weeks of actually using the phone.

But then, stuff kept happening and kept pushing this further and further away. There are a couple of issues with Apple that they didn't actually resolve, but I'm tired of waiting, so we're putting an end to this right now. Let's get to it.

After all this time, I guess I can say that I've put this thing through its phases. I've put it through all the tests, but not just once, three times, because this is the third unit that was sent to me by Apple because of the issues that we are going to discuss.

That's when talking specifically about the 12 Pro Max for my own luck. But, to prevent me from one, getting too negative, and two, rambling on like a crazy person, let's try to pull everything back together with a little bit of structure as usual.

First, with the design, this is not exactly news to anyone, but this is basically an iPhone 4 or 5, bumped up to 11, in this case, 12. The design itself squared off and it's big in every single dimension compared to the 11 Pro Max, which makes this quite a big phone.

Despite me not having particularly large hands, this is not uncomfortable to use. Granted, reaching every corner of the display isn't necessarily easy to do with one hand, but accessibility truly helps with that, so all in all, the design, it's a win. I really like it.

The 4 and 5 were the best designs Apple had done up until that point. This just took that to another level.

In terms of features, there's a new processor inside, an A14 bionic with superb performance.

There are new stuff around the cameras. This year, we have even more stuff around the cameras with different hardware on the cameras of the 12 Pro Max specifically. That's something rather new.

Also, you have MagSafe. I guess you can call MagSafe as one of the features. It's not a selling point at all in my opinion, but it is one of the features of these iPhone 12s.

The performance is absolutely stellar. Forget benchmarks. The 12 Pro Max destroys benchmarks and eats them for breakfast. It's probably the most powerful chip you can have on a phone across every single flagship out there.

This thing performs like crazy, and it's very consistent. It never gives out. However, it has one compromise when it comes to the 11 Pro Max specifically.

At first, everybody said that this thing had worse battery life than the 11 Pro Max. When I got it in hand, it did have even worse battery life than the 11 Pro Max. But in time, it actually learned my usage behavior. Granted, it's not something that's new to the 12 lineup. The iOS has been doing this for a while.

But 12 Pro Max did improve battery life overall to the point where, at least now, I consistently get either the same or better battery life than what I used to have with my 11 Pro Max, which is recording this right now. Granted, this is not something that I would tell you guys, expect to have better battery life after a while with your 12 rather than your 11 because it seems to be luck at the draw.

Then, you have the cameras, which are obviously better than the 11 lineup. When you get to the 12 Pro Max, it gets even more interesting because these cameras can record Adobe Vision HDR in 4k, 24 frames, 30 frames, and 60 frames a second, which is awesome.

Plus, with all the power on the A14 Bionic and everything inside of this thing, you can work with those files and edit, export, and do all this sort of stuff and view them in the beautiful display that this thing comes with. Beyond that, the 12 Pro Max has bigger sensors on all three cameras.

You have 2.5 x zoom instead of 2x zoom. You have a beautiful and awesome Ultra Wide. You have better low-light performance and better overall general camera performance because of those bigger sensors.

You have stabilization directly on the sensor of the main lens, which is even better than having it on the lens itself, which means that what was already the most consistent camera you could have on your pocket and easily among the top three, is now still there, but the lead that it had on recording video went from being like huge to being humongous.

Yes, there is a difference between what you can see in recording from the stabilization that the 12 Pro Max has over the 12 and the 12 Pro. It's not night and day, but it is there. Comparing this to the competition is just not funny.

With all that said, we get into the issues. One of them is overheating, which is something that I haven't felt or seen happen to iPhones in a long while.

Even when I'm recording 4k video in HDR, it doesn't matter the frame rate, or when I'm editing photos in Lightroom, this thing overheats, not to the point of actually closing down the application or shutting off the phone, but to the point where the brightness of the beautiful display is halved to about 50% tops.

This doesn't detract from the whole experience that much, but it's still something to acknowledge, and it's not something I expected to see happening.

The second issue, which is actually why I kept sending these things back to Apple and then trying to get me one that didn't have any problems, is again about the display because the iPhone 12 Pro Max from launch has been having consistent problems with calibration.

This particular model, which is the third one that I received, isn't as bad as the first or the second, but you would still have a sort of a light yellow tint over everything.

I mean people did even try to find workarounds through accessibility trying to actually tint on purpose the display to another color to balance stuff out, but honestly, that's one not something you should expect from a factory-calibrated display like an Apple display and second, it's definitely not something that you should or would expect from a phone with a price of about $1,100 (prices may change).

Between those two issues, I didn't expect the overheating to happen. It's not exactly cool. The calibration issue actually did bother me enough to say that if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have much to complain about it, but since that is here, I do, and both of those issues seem to be particular to the 12 Pro Max. It's not happening as much, if at all, with the other phones in the 12 lineup.

At about $1100 (prices may change) for the 12 Pro Max, is this thing, at almost half its lifecycle, still worth it? Is it a good buy? It truly depends because all in all, the truth is, the entire 12 lineup is made up of in-between iPhones.

Yes, even though this is a new design and it has better and different hardware inside, every couple of years we get some of these releases. It seems like it's just a step in a new direction, but it's still a stepping stone.

The 13, which is going to come out later on this year, is definitely, or at least probably going to be the one to actually push the boundaries and actually bring on even more stuff, more features, and more new to what the 12 tried to do before.

If not for the design specifically, MagSafe, if you're like that into magnets, or the fact that you really need or want a camera that can record Adobe Vision HDR in a phone that can actually do stuff with that same recording and then export it and share it and do all those sorts of things, I'd say that upgrading from the 11 to the 12 is 99.9% not worth it.

Just because this is an in-between iPhone, it doesn't mean that I don't like it personally. If you want one of those things right now, go for it. The iPhone 12 Pro Max a good buy. I'm not going to say it's not. I got one for myself mostly because the camera, but if you can wait just a little bit longer because the wait time is just flying right now, the way things are going, before you blink, it's going to be new iPhone time.

And then, you can have everything that this can do and with the faults, maybe, one could expect at least or hope, ironed out. Why not wait just a little bit longer for that? Hold your horses. I believe in you. You can do it.

If you like the color blue, like the new blue iPhone from the 12 lineup, don't count on it still being available when the 13 actually comes out, disregarding everything else that I just said about the reasons why you should wait or not wait for the 13 instead of the 12. If you really want that blue, maybe now is the only time that you're going to be able to grab it, so there's that.

Anyway, that's it. I hope you guys enjoyed the video, so like, subscribe, hit the bell here, and share the video if you've enjoyed it as well because it really helps me out a lot, and I appreciate it.

Thanks a lot for watching. This is Gus, and I'll catch you guys later.