Apple iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max Review: Love at First Zoom

I’ve reviewed and tested iPhones for years, but Apple’s new iPhone 15 Pro Max is the first time I’ve ever been this enamored. (The iPhone 12 Mini is a close second.) Both phones, along with the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus and new Apple Watches, are now available in stores.

I tested the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max for five days, but it wasn’t until I was photographing a bodega cat named Kit Kat that I realized just how many improvements these phones have. They are brimming. After I took Kit Kat’s picture, I saw the option to turn his image into a portrait mode photo. It’s a minor detail but one with a significance: Nearly any photo can now be a portrait photo. And this isn’t even the biggest addition.

Apple gave its Pro models a glow-up with a refreshed lighter build, a new shortcut button and the world’s smallest processor. And it did all this while managing to keep that tried-and-true iPhone aesthetic front and center. In my time reviewing both phones, I recorded videos of penguins swimming, played the console game Resident Evil Village on the 15 Pro, gave the 15 Pro Max’s new zoom lens a spin atop a San Francisco Ferris wheel and tried, absentmindedly, to put a Lightning cable into the new USB-C port. Old habits, am I right?

The iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max are defined by their refinements. This pair of phones is one of the most compelling releases from Apple in years.

But all this comes at a cost. While the 15 Pro costs $999 (£999, AU$1,849), the same price as the 2017 iPhone X, the barrier of entry for the 15 Pro Max is $100 more than it was last year. Apple got rid of the cheapest 128GB storage option leaving the $1,199 model with 256GB of storage as the new baseline. And that’s a price right on par with Samsung’s Galaxy S23 Ultra.

If you’re curious about the other phones Apple is launching, check out CNET Senior Editor Lisa Eadicicco’s review of the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus.Pricing and storage comparison

Pricing and storage comparison

iPhone 15 Pro design embraces titanium and USB-C

The new titanium body is lovely, light and easy to hold thanks to its ever-so-slightly rounded edges. It feels less bulky than the straight-edged 12, 13 and 14 series. In fact, it’s almost like Apple merged the curved sides of the X, XS and 11 families with the blocky sides of recent years to find a Goldilocks-style middle ground with the 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max. That said, most people will likely put a case on the phone and not notice these changes at all.

There are two more major changes to the body. The first is the inclusion of a USB-C port instead of the Lightning port found on previous models. While the move definitely made headlines even before Apple announced it, in reality it’s not a radical change. I now plug in a USB-C cable (which comes with the phone) instead of a Lighting one. But it’s convenient to use the “one ring to rule them all” of charging cables.

Then there are the buttons. The volume buttons feel a bit more springy than the buttons on previous stainless steel Pro models. It’s like wearing a pair of foam-soled sneakers, where you get that extra spring in your step, rather than the airbag cushioning we had in shoes like the Nike Air Max back in the ’80s and ’90s. Both are comfortable, but the newer design with foam is more so.

Goodbye mute switch, hello action button

The mute (or silence) switch is gone and replaced with an action button. By default it lets you silence your iPhone, but you can also customize it to turn on the flashlight, record a voice memo and open the camera, among other things. I especially liked having it open the camera. Once the app is open, the action button doubles as a physical shutter button to take a photo. But the simple fact that I can use the button to trigger a shortcut multiplies its possibilities.

The button only reacts to two kinds of input: a tap or a press. It can only trigger one feature at a time which seems limiting. I do hope that Apple opens this up and lets people program multiple presses and taps to trigger different presets. Like maybe two presses in a row launches a shortcut and one press silences the phone. Right now, the only way to change what the button does is to go into the Settings app, scroll down to the action button and change it there. Also I’d welcome the ability to add a Control Center button that gets me into this action button menu quicker.

Read more: This Is the Only Way You Should Turn On Your iPhone Flashlight

Like last year’s 14 and 14 Plus, the 15 Pros have a completely redesigned interior that makes it easier to repair. If the back glass is damaged, it should be faster and more affordable to have it replaced. Below is a comparison of how much it costs to replace the back glass on the new phone versus older Pro iPhone models.

Back glass replacement cost

iPhone 15 Pro Max’s 5x zoom

Let’s just get this out of the way. The zoom lens on the small Pro is different from the one on the big Pro Max. The 15 Pro has a tried and true 3x telephoto camera like previous models. But the 15 Pro Max has a new 5x telephoto camera that’s made with multiple prisms and some clever engineering.

In contrast, there are a number of Android phones with periscope-style telephoto lenses that use a single prism to bounce light to the sensor, like the 10x zoom on the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. The advantage to Apple’s design is that the lens takes up much less space and allows the image sensor to sit parallel with the lens, eliminating the restriction of having a telephoto image sensor that’s limited in size by the thickness of the phone.

Both Pro phones also have a larger 48-megapixel sensor on the main camera, which helps improve performance in low light. When I was photographing with the iPhone 15 Pro Max and 14 Pro Max after dusk, I noticed that the newer phone didn’t have to go into night mode as much. Also the photonic engine, Apple’s fancy-pants name for photo processing, seems to help with highlights more.

Take a look at some of my favorite photos that I took with the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max.