iPhone 13 Pro Review: Better Than You Think!

[Music] to the center of the center the iphone 13 pro and 13 pro max are better than you think so really there's only three things about this phone that are genuinely better than the regular 13. and one of them you could argue maybe not that many people are actually going to notice but the other two are pretty big jumps and so this feels like a pretty big upgrade disguised in the same design as last year so i've reviewed the iphone 13 already it was earlier this week there i go over cinematic mode and the new a15 bionic and a smaller notch etc this pro phone has all of that but then on top of that the three major things that this phone does better than the regular 13 would be the screen the battery and the cameras and everything in wait marquez that's the same list of three things you said was better about the 13 than the 12 you'd be right but this takes a bigger leap in all those things so to start with the screen the 13 pro is the same size as the 13 and the 13 pro max is bigger again same sizes and resolutions as last year but now there's a smaller notch neat okay looks a little better on the bigger screen even though there is no more information on that extra screen but then the display is actually noticeably brighter here even versus the 13. it hits a thousand nits max brightness versus the 800 on the 13 and even 1200 in its peak with hdr and it's really good it's viewable everywhere outdoors great responsive auto brightness and it's still one of the most color accurate oled panels out there but what we're really here for finally is apple's pro phones now getting pro motion meaning an adaptive high refresh rate display it's about damn time now this has been really interesting to watch unfold because it's not just a matter of dropping 120 hertz display into the phone and then calling it a day there's a couple different considerations and nuances and things to be able to do to do it well and then there's whether or not people even notice that's two different things so as a self-proclaimed pixel enthusiast as someone who's seen a lot of phones apple has done this really well and it's of course an oled but it's also an ltpo display meaning it's an adaptive variable refresh rate that can ramp up to 120 hertz but also now down to as low as 10 hertz it actually has 12 different refresh rates that it cycles between which is seven more than the ipad pro so this helps it respond to exactly what's happening on the display so if you're watching a 24 fps movie the display only needs to refresh 24 times per second but if you're scrolling through a website or social media it'll be nice and smooth maybe if you're gaming it's pinned at 120 hertz but if you're just sitting on a home screen or reading some text like an email nothing's happening on the screen it can go all the way down to 10 hertz which can save battery so this tech has been around for years and other phones and it's great so the interesting part is different phones ramp up at different times and for different reasons and different amounts so an example is like no matter how high refresh rate of an android phone i have it's always 60 hertz for google maps anytime i open google maps the whole rest of the phone notification panel using the app it's all 60 hertz probably to save battery because it's a gps heavy app but that's one thing it always does so it turns out there have been a lot of places where people have noticed the iphone doesn't ramp all the way up to 120 hertz in fact a lot of places in third party apps where it still stays at 60. now i've noticed just from using a whole ton of different apps i was actually pretty impressed by how many are already using 120hz animations and all these apps inside and out felt smoother and more responsive also all of ios is smoother and more responsive but for those that don't apple has put out detailed instructions on how to make it easy for developers to update their apps to fully support promotion exactly the way they want to so when your favorite apps get updated hopefully the developers include it but all that being said will regular people who get this phone even notice promotion this is something i've thought a lot about especially since the announcement you know of course lots of other phones have gotten higher fresh rate in the past but because it's an iphone this is for millions of people who have only ever seen a 60hz phone their entire lives this will be the first time they ever see a high refresh trade screen on a phone and so this is this is the thing i've been talking about for so long so when i actually first got this phone i started handing it to people you know discreetly of course but handing it to them like hey do you notice anything different about this phone like swipe around maybe hold it next to your current phone do you feel like it feels any different and i'll be the first to admit not as many people immediately noticed it as i was hoping like you know different people had different things about it that they noticed like there's a really good video by joshua chang where he did that same thing he handed the phone to a bunch of people and they all had different ways of explaining what they noticed so some of them didn't notice but some of them noticed things like text staying more crisp on the screen while you're scrolling some people just straight up noticed the better smoothness and touch responsiveness and called that out so i'll put it this way not everyone will notice promotion right away especially if they're not looking for it but but i don't have i'm not crazy it's not like i have special eyes or anything so i guarantee you this if you get somebody used to 120 hertz or just high refresh rate in general and they use this phone for a couple weeks a couple months and then you hand them back a 60 hertz phone they will notice that difference and they won't want to switch back to it basically i think people who buy this pro iphone and get used to promotion won't want to switch back to a 60hz iphone just like people who switch to a higher fresh rate android phone don't want to switch back either but also i'm kind of hoping apple doesn't ship another 60hz iphone next year they definitely could but i'm hoping like 90 hertz at least something like that either way that's my stance on the higher fresh rate the promotion in the pro iphones clearly the implementation technically speaking is pretty great it's super color accurate it's very bright it looks great and it's very smooth so despite the notch and some apps needing to be updated it's one of the best looking screens on any phone right now and going with ltpo let these phones with their new higher fresh rates also be battery champs so this is the second big thing about these new phones which is holy smokes man the batteries got really good now there's a couple different compounding factors that all pile on top of each other to make this happen the fact that the pro motion dips below 60 hertz to save you battery when you don't need it is number one but number two the a15 bionic is more efficient than last year and then the fact that these phones are actually slightly thicker and heavier to support an actually larger battery is a really big number three so the battery inside the 13 pro is about 11 larger than the 12 pro and the 13 pro max cell is about 18 larger than the 12 pro max that's not a small amount and you can't actually feel it in the weight these new phones are about 20 grams heavier than last year and probably heavier than the phone you're holding right now and the results have been dope i've mostly been dailying the 13 pro here and getting six seven hours of screen on time no problem never really killing the phone in a day i'd consider that an a and david's been testing the 13 pro max here at the studio and getting crazy endurance numbers he had a day with five hours of screen on time with 50 battery left which is nuts so i'm gonna go ahead and put the iphone 13 pro max right up at the top of the battery champ 2021 power rankings right now alongside a bunch of other phones with like the super massive batteries like the rog phone 5 and the moto g power so screens check batteries check but once again the biggest change with these new pro phones is the cameras again so first of all i really like that the 13 pro and 13 pro max have the exact same set of cameras between them so the phones are basically identical except for screen size and battery size so that's nice uh but yeah once again big leap up with the pro phones and their cameras and they've got the camera bump to go with it and it really is a massive like three layer camera bump with this phone if you don't have a case on the phone you'll immediately notice it sits up higher it rocks more from certain corners on a table and it just kind of looks at you funny remember when we thought the iphone 12 pro had huge cameras yeah no this is next level these are much larger sensors and cameras in here so we've got triple cameras still got lidar and a mic and a flash and each of these cameras is better than last year in its own way so the primary 12 megapixel camera with that even larger sensor shift stabilization is excellent it's remarkably consistent through various lighting and indoor and outdoor scenarios there's also of course the photographic styles to choose from that i talked about in the previous video i landed on rich contrast as my favorite and honestly just left it there for most of my photos main thing you'll notice that makes it better is the big sensor look that we had only in the pro max last year so this natural bokeh is so easy now that you might find yourself having to tap to focus just a little bit more just to make sure you're focused on the right thing and you'll find that you can get that natural background blur much easier it's not always perfect there's it's still tiny smartphone optics but the natural blur is better than fake portrait mode blur every time so it does a great job not fringing also like some other big smartphone sensors do the telephoto is also better this year so it's once again a bigger sensor and it's also now a 3x optical zoom instead of a 2x or 2.5 x from last year and it looks almost as good as the main sensor so you love to see that that consistency between different cameras gives you the confidence to be able to switch between cameras like it doesn't even matter which one you're using and that's more true this year than ever before now it's no s21 ultra you know you're not going to do that deep double digit zooming very well some of the best periscope zooms literally look crisp at 10x while the iphone is maxing out at 15 and it looks like a watercolor painting there so it's going to be up to you to decide if that's something you care about having in your phone or not and then last but not least the ultra wide again closing in on the corner to corner sharpness of the main camera it's not quite there but this is this is one area where i was maybe hoping to see a higher resolution because you're spreading this pixel count over such a wide focal range maybe 16 24 megapixels even would have been cool to see just to get that true matching sharpness nevertheless the photos and videos from the ultrawide are world class literally tops among any ultrawides in any smartphone and it's now also capable of macro photography unlike the ultra wide in the 13 and 13 mini and honestly it's pretty good so you can get pretty close right up to about two centimeters minimum focus distance and there's a pretty good amount of you know chromatic aberration and fringing and artifacting around the outside of the frames but as long as you tap to focus you can get a pretty good close-up right in the middle and it's way better than any crappy 2-megapixel macro camera has ever dreamed of being now i mentioned during the impressions video the pro phones are doing this auto switching where if something comes within about 14 centimeters of the camera it automatically switches to the ultra wide in macro mode doesn't tell you and doesn't let you manually switch back honestly it's the most annoying part of using this camera to me i take plenty of close-ups of objects because i have no friends i guess and every time i switch to the ultrawides macro it produces an objectively worse looking photo so apple's reached out and they have said sense that they do plan on adding a toggle to let you manual out of that macro mode i hope it gets added soon it should be a software update can't wait for it because my photos are suffering you know there's still no astrophotography mode in the iphone even though in night mode you can sometimes see some stars if you hold the phone still for long enough and there's no pro mode for manual control over photos or for videos that's still going to require a third party app to really dig into that stuff what they did add is cinematic video mode which i talked about in the 13 review to summarize it's a 1080p 30fps hdr video portrait mode and i really don't think it's the answer when it comes to taking the reins and making the best videos possible on your iphone at least not yet i mean if you want to tailor a whole entire shoot around focus racking then yes the iphones will punch above their weight class but i found myself using the regular video mode or even third-party apps to get the best video out of the iphone still but you know it would actually help to get better video out of the iphone prores video giant asterisk that's not in the phones yet so the pro iphones should also ideally in a software update be getting prores video for those unfamiliar that's a high quality video codec that's used all over the professional industry it's a pretty sweet should be awesome to be able to shoot prores video from your phone mix it with other cameras bring it into your editor and just start chopping that couple other small asterisks though one prores video would be 4k 30 on every pro iphone except the 128 gig base storage versions those will max out at 1080p 30fps it's unclear if this is because you'd just fill up the storage too fast and they didn't want to let you you know there could be some merit to that 4k is big files it's like six gigs per minute you could theoretically fill up the whole phone in two hours if you just shot all day but also it could be because the slower storage that's typically used in lower pricing lower tiered models of less storage might not have supported it in the first place it's a high data rate one or the other maybe both i don't know but just know as long as if you're planning on getting a pro iphone just to shoot 4k prores video you'll have to get at least a 256gb version and you can actually go all the way up to one terabyte of total storage but the tough part about having a one terabyte iphone 13 pro full of huge prores files is offloading that to your computer via lightning at those awful speeds is going to take forever it's not exactly a pro workflow it's so brutal that for all the big game apple always talks about usbc and the ipad and every other thing they do and thunderbolt it's just never made it to the iphone matter of fact let me use this as a segue for all the things that i wish this iphone pro had for a thousand dollars number one usb type c probably never gonna happen but i can still dream and then faster charging and i don't mean the 27 watts that the pro max can apparently support from a higher powered brick that's not included in the box i mean like real 50 65 watt maybe even higher wattage charging someday that again is probably never gonna happen and i've made a whole video about why apple hasn't done that and some other things like high resolution cameras etc i'll leave a link below the like button but nevertheless pro max's huge battery still takes a very long time to charge and i wish there was an all black option ah minor detail there's always a case or skin for that but there's a couple other minor things that didn't quite fit into this full review so you can turn down the refresh rate of the display to 60 hertz limited but it's not in the display settings like in every other phone it's in accessibility settings under motion and then limit frame rate i haven't tested this for more than about a few minutes but i have a feeling it won't actually save that much battery on this phone considering it's actively bringing you down below 60 hertz all the time anyway then if if you're using a magsafe duo charger which i actually do when i'm traveling the new camera bump on the 13 pro is so big that it actually gets pretty close to the wireless charging coil to the point where if you have a case on your phone it actually pops the phone up slightly off the charger now it still works but i'd be careful what case you buy just in case you get one with a camera bump that's too big and now suddenly it doesn't make contact with the charger anymore and then the new sierra blue color just so you know is a little paler in person than it looks in the press materials and on apple's site just warning you you know it's a slightly bluish silver not that that's a bad thing just a warning i'll try to show it as best i can with all the footage from the shiny new raptor camera so the minor upgrade turns out to be pretty solid after all spoiler alert every iphone upgrade from here till the end of time is it's gonna be a minor upgrade that's the way smartphones are but look there's nothing wrong with a small upgrade in my opinion that's how you eventually get great at something is by getting a little bit better every time you do it i would know that's how i've gotten better at making videos and that's exactly what i went over in my skillshare course so skillshare is an online learning community for creatives where you can find thousands of classes for creative and curious people on all kinds of topics illustration photography and now making mkbhd videos like i've said before i'm self-taught at pretty much everything we do here and that's like the number one comment i get anytime we try something a little new or different like car videos or something there's always comments like oh you're not good at that just stick to regular tech videos but how do you think people who are good at car videos started they had to get started somewhere and just get a little bit better over time so i've taken some skillshare courses myself and there's even one on animating four youtube videos uh by evan from the polymatter channel that i'm super into and he is also self-taught so hey if you start seeing you know slightly better animations here and there on the channel maybe some of that is michael who's of course doing world-class animations here but maybe some of that is me chipping in which would be nice but yeah for my skillshare class it's my fundamentals for how we put together these mkbhd videos that's what it's all about so skillshare is also curated specifically for learning so there's no ads so you can stay focused and it's less than 10 bucks a month for an annual membership so here's the deal skillshare was kind enough to sponsor this video and give the first thousand of you that click the link below in the description a free trial to a premium membership and what can be better than that so you can get started with your learning and your creativity but that's pretty much it for the 13 pro let me know what you think of this phone in the comments section below we can talk about it thanks for watching catch you guys the next one peace [Music]

Channel: Marques Brownlee

Views: 3,840,990

Rating: 4.905313 out of 5

Keywords: iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone 13, iPhone 13 Pro vs, iPhone 13 Pro Max, iPhone 13 Pro MKBHD, MKBHD, ProMotion, 120Hz, iPhone 13 Pro camera, iPhone 13 pro cameras, display, screen, iPhone pro screen, cinematic mode, iPhone 13 Pro Max vs, battery, battery life

Id: TnkdoEZhTbc

Length: 18min 22sec (1102 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 01 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Holde1223]

120Hz is like a great bass player in a band.

Some people might not notice when he is there.

But everybody notices when he is gone.

[u/JamesMcFlyJR]

I can agree with MKBHD’s statement about 120hz. Personally when I got my iPhone, 120hz wasn’t that big of a upgrade I was expecting it to be. I was like, “oh i can see it’s smoother but not a game changer. I barely notice it sometimes”. Was kinda disappointed since I usually have an eye and appreciation for small details

but i’ve had this 13 Pro Max for about a week and just went back to my XS Max and i couldn’t believe how laggy it felt. And the XS Max was freshly restored too. At that moment I was like “oh ok now i understand how great 120hz is”

[u/old_snake]

Love it but I miss the fuck out of 3D touch. All they need to do is add another option to speed up the hold time even more and it will be fine.

They also need to increase the size of the hit spot for holding to get cursor access. It should be the entire bottom keyboard row 123-Space-Return, not just the tiny space bar.

I’ve also noticed the haptic engine feels substantially weaker.

[u/squirrelhoodie]

Unfortunately, I'm now so used to the mini size and weight that I really don't want to go back to the bigger size phone. But oh man, those cameras and the ProMotion screen. 🤤

[u/marxcom]

Unlike MrMobile, MKBHD is not complaining that iPhone doesn’t fold.

[u/Valtteri-Its-WDC]

“I’ll leave a link below the like button”

Subtle way of asking for likes, like it

[u/fusion23]

This screen is simple incredible and 100% worth it.

I up/downgraded from iPhone 12 pro max to iPhone 13 pro (max is just too big and heavy). The crispness of the motion on the 120 hz Oled is the first thing I noticed and makes using the phone very pleasurable. I was a little surprised it was such a noticeable difference and it makes using my iPad pro 12.9" look like it's an LCD from 2001 (terrible motion trails).

[u/ownage516]

Shoutout to Best Buy who practically let me upgrade my iPhone 12 Pro to a 13 pro for $100.

But on holy shit this battery is amazing. Going from the 12 pro battery to this battery is legit a life changer. This phone should’ve been the 12 pro. I have no idea why it wasn’t

[u/the_hackerman]

I got it and loving it