iPhone 15 vs 15 Pro In-Depth Review | Do You Really Need A Pro?

all right so I've already put out a detailed review on the iPhone 15 pro and pro Max in a video that shows how they compare to each other and to last year's phones I've recently done the same for the regular iPhone 15s as well and I think for a lot of people the switch to USBC in particular has sealed the deal that upgrading to one of the new 15 series phones is the best choice but for many the question remains as to whether you should go for a 15 or a 15 Pro and actually I think even more people don't even ask themselves this question and perhaps they should I've spent a really good amount of time with both models now and this video will cover all of the differences and explain just exactly what you get with those Pro Models hopefully by the end of the video it'll be easier to answer the question do you actually need a pro so the first thing to consider is simply the design the look of the phone is actually important you're going to be seeing this every day and you deserve to enjoy it in previous years I've always preferred the pros because that satin texture back glass looks and feels so much nicer in my opinion but this year the regular 15s get that too and this really closes the gap on how premium each model feels plus I definitely think the dual camera layout looks better than the pros triple camera what do you guys think you've also got the aluminium frame on the 15s that doesn't discolor with fingerprints like the pros titanium does so they actually look cleaner plus the greater range of color options on the 15s gives you more choice so the appearance Factor goes in favor of the 15s if you ask me but you've also got ergonomics yes the pros are thankfully lighter this year and I love that but not as light as the regular 15s they still are more comfortable in the hand and easier to use you're not going to notice the microscopic height and width differences but you will notice how much thinner they are including the camera bump and how much lighter so I definitely prefer how the Baseline 15s feel in the hand there are other practical aspects to consider one being the the action button on the pros versus the mute switch on the regulars I'll be honest I've actually kept my Pros action button as the mute function I do find the switch more satisfying to flick across than holding the button and I also use it just as much as I do the switch not at all but clearly the pros action button offers a lot more functionality including for some genuinely useful features that is better overall I still wish it had more gesture options but if you want quick access to a shortcut of your choice you'll want a Pro then there's the durability Factor the pros titanium build is of course stronger than aluminium the thing is though there's no obvious threshold whereby if you dropped the 15 on the floor it would break but the pro wouldn't of course the titanium does minimize the risk but in reality actually using the phones out in the real world you could just get lucky or unlucky with either of them the same with picking up dents and scratches the glass is really the bigger factor and that's the same on both so is the water resistance In fairness to the pros it now costs the same as the 15s to repair the back glass however repairs in general are still more expensive with the pro that's something you should consider too especially if you're kind of clumsy so this is my perhaps unpopular opinion but I'd actually prefer the pros to have an aluminium frame as well actually I reckon if Apple offered the pros in a cheaper aluminium option most Pro users would go for that if you're going to use a phone case anyway then the whole durability Factor basically comes irrelevant I actually had a recommendation for cases in my Pro review the mag easy cases from Baka I like these because they're super thin so you can actually hang on to that wonderful naked phone feeling but still get the pece of mind that comes with the added layer of protection I especially want to shout out their new star Peak series I think these look awesome and this back material both hides fingerprints really well but best of all it feels really nice as well you've still got raised camera bump and Screen protection mag safe supports and they're available for all of the 15 series models so if you want to pick one of these up I'll have them linked Down Below in the video description looking at the display differences there are fewer than in previous years thanks to the upgrades for the regular 15s they now get Dynamic Island just like the pros and perhaps more importantly the upgraded screen brightness I think that would have definitely pushed me towards a pro otherwise because having a super bright display outdoors in bright sunlight is so useful but you get that with both models now the pros still offer thinner bezels so that's just a nice aesthetic tweak that does make them more visually appealing it's up to you how much this bothers you but on its own I don't think it's enough to justify the price jump for a pro the key difference Remains the Same as it's been for years the regular 15s still have a 60 HZ refresh rate versus the pro super smooth Pro motion display this is without doubt the single biggest point of contention the dealbreaker difference for many many people and I'll be honest that includes myself I don't even really think this this is a pro user problem either if you're used to any High refresh rate phone that could even be a cheap Android device with one you will probably find the regular 15's display is choppy and slow a high refresh rate can be a subtle change to upgrade to but it's definitely much harder to have a downgrade back to 60 HZ so if you're coming from a higher refresh rate phone already then I'd have to recommend you go for a pro to avoid disappointment or at least try out the 15s display before committing the pros variable refresh rate can drop down low to just one Hertz that's good for battery saving and this also enables the always on display feature so if you want to be able to glance down at the time and your lock screen widgets even when your phone is locked or perhaps take advantage of iOS 17's new standby mode and the various widgets that offers that's something only the pros offer for some the aod is super important as well and fair enough I personally could happily go without that but the smoother motion when scrolling on my Pro is something I now simply can't do without I would choose the regular 15 in a heartbeat if it weren't for this one key feature difference but I'm so adjusted to high refresh rates now that I can't ever go back it's just too jarring annoyingly this is now a deal breaker for me and forces me into paying for a pro even if I didn't want any of the other Pro features of course Apple knows this and from their point of view it's only a smart decision to intentionally keep this Factor separating the Pro Models still there are plenty of people who will be upgrading from older non-pro iPhones or those who simply just don't notice much of a difference Apple knows this too and for those people the regular 15 and 15 plus will be the best choice the cost saving you get by not choosing a pro is definitely worth it in that instance especially now that the displays still have the pros Dynamic Island features High brightness and you can get exactly the same screen sizes as the pros 2 for those of you who want to know about the speakers the overall volume and stereo separation is basically identical however the pros do seem to have more prominent bass so they are slightly better [Applause] overall the performance is another area that differentiates the pro iPhones but I'll caveat this by saying depending on how you use these phones this year they get Apple's latest 17 Pro chipset whilst the regular 15s get the a16 bionic from last year's Pros so we've actually already seen in the Pro review how these two chipsets compare but for those interested this is how the numbers stack up with the new 15 series they do speak to an increase across the board with the pros but it's mainly in the graphics performance where you get significant gains one interesting thing I found when testing was that the 15s actually failed a super intensive Ray tracing based Benchmark I ran whereas the pros could handle it so if you're someone who's heavily into video editing or gaming and I don't mean you Flappy Bird Candy Crush people I mean the most demanding games played by those who count every extra frame per second you get sure the pros will definitely offer you a superior experience that pushes the limits of current smartphones just remember it's not like anyone was complaining about the 14 Pros performance last year it was still insanely good and that's what you get with the regular 15s so I feel like the people who would actually benefit from the improvements the pros bring you already know you're getting a pro everyone else you just don't need that much power you're not even engaging it except in the most graphically intense situations and it's not like those smaller CPU gains translate into noticeable speed improvements either using the phones normally opening apps load times Etc you're honestly not likely to notice any difference the one thing that might actually affect a more average or casual user is the ram situation you get 8 GB with the pros and six with the 15s and in previous years the ram difference hasn't mattered as much I OS always used to be the limiting factor with things like holding multiple apps open in the background but this year I am actually experiencing an improvement with the pros ability to bring back my apps exactly where I left off even hours later I just find the regular 15s would need to refresh them a bit more often and the pros higher Ram count is the likely explanation there are two connectivity spec differences I want to mention too in that the pros get Wi-Fi 6E compared to Wi-Fi 6 if you don't have a Wi-Fi 6E router then that will make no difference and the other is that threads radio so this is more of a future proofing feature that as the technology develops more will allow improved connectivity for example with thread smart home devices I suspect Apple has even bigger plans than that but right now it's way too early to call this any real Advantage other places you might notice a performance difference are with the USB C ports you can connect up all the same accessories with both models but the pros get much faster USB 3 speeds for data transfer I actually timed transferring the same 5 GB file onto my 15 and then my 15 Pro and we're looking at 2 minutes 18 compared to 31 seconds so there's obviously a big difference there you've got to ask yourself how often you'll utilize this type of functionality in day-to-day use realistically most people will never use this in fact it's geared more towards professionals who again probably know they need a pro iPhone for their workflow anyway and this Pro feature could actually be quite important for you so there is a data transfer speed difference but I want to avoid confusion here and emphasize that this is completely separate from the charging speed that part is actually pretty much exactly the same you get slight variations and it can depend on the type of charger you use as well but for all intents and purposes you can say that the pros don't offer a charging speed advantage and then we've got the battery life and that's something that will affect everyone obviously the bigger plus and pro Max models offer much better battery life than their smaller siblings but what about Pro versus non-pro well Apple claims the pros will give you three extra hours of video playback with them though confusingly five fewer hours of audio playback logically that could fit the A7 Pro chip may offer better efficiency and you might expect the display's variable refresh rate to help with battery saving too but in real world testing that's not what I've been experiencing I actually ran my own video playback tests side by side and the regular 15s consistently came out on top it was close but when the pros are supposed to last 3 hours longer you could even say that's misleading from Apple I noticed my 15 Pro draining quicker especially in standby mode so I made sure to test that out as well and sure enough it was dropping faster than the 15 and know I wasn't using the aod so there's no obvious explanation for this under more typical use as well the 15 and 15 plus were clearly outperforming the pro and pro Max that's obviously going to go against what people would expect so definitely consider this before buying because battery life is often one of the higher priorities for people and you shouldn't expect the pros to be better just because they're the pros let's talk about the cameras now and Apple has in many ways closed the gap on the pros with the significant camera upgrade the regular 15s got this year once again only the pros offer the liar scanner and they have the extra telephoto lens on the back so this usually lends itself to better night mode and of course Zoom performance even the ultra wide and Main lenses are slightly different spec though it's only the selfie lenses that are identical so we'll of course take a look at how photos actually compare side by side here's a list of all the pro exclusive features now most of these pertain only to professionals and enthusiasts but hopefully these comparisons will help you decide whether or not you need those Pro features so first of all one quick difference is that the pros let you set your preferred default focal length and also to instantly tap between them that's cool but definitely something a casual user doesn't need they're also the only models that let you shoot in Apple's Pro raw format that actually could be very important if you're into professional photo editing and need the raw metadata to do this I actually have a dedicated video detailing exactly what Apple Pro raw is and the massive benefit this can bring to photo editing if you're interested by far the most common use case though will be the normal photo mode using the main lens and now that the 15 and 15 plus match the pros 48 megapixels you get unsurprisingly very similar results in fact one commenter asked me if I'd reused some of the pro shots in the iPhone 15 review that's how similar they were Apple's new 24 megapixel output has brought a significant Improvement in the amount of detail captured and despite the different chipsets powering these phones you tend to see just as good of an improvement on the regular 15s the entire 15 series gets smart HDR 5 as well and the 15s usually match the pros improved dynamic range I say usually though because I did spot some instances where the pros still handled the highlights with a little bit more control I saw enough instances of this to think that it's may be down to a slightly better ISP but as I said the 15s are usually just as good notice also the slightly warmer colors on the right with the pros I picked up on that in the Pro review and I must say that I actually prefer the more natural white balance that the regular 15s generally produce the color tends to be the main difference with the ultra wide lens as well once again it's that warmer tone with the pros but otherwise the quality tends to be almost indistinguishable though I will show one night mode Advantage for the pros Ultra wide later one pro exclusive feature related to the ultra wide lens is macro mode now that the regular 15s have these new main lenses the minimum Focus distance is longer than in previous years what you're seeing on the left is as close as you can get before losing focus so you'd have to crop in a significant amount on the regular 15s to achieve a similar effect and even then you simply can't get the same kind of shots and it can be hard to focus so if you like macro and want to get super close up to your subject then this is a great reason to spend extra on a pro I think the main reason people tend to want the pros camera is the dedicated zoom lens now we've seen some really nice gains in the zoom performance of the regular 15s already remember it now has effectively a two 2x optical zoom built in just like the pros by cropping in on the main lens so with that lending support to the digital Zoom performance the difference compared to the pros 3x Tey lens is now smaller than ever before without zooming in it's pretty hard to spot the pros Advantage but that dedicated 3x lens does still produce sharper and cleaner looking images and that continues above 3x as well but this is where things get a bit complicated because if I switch out the pro for the pro Max now there's basically no quality difference at all and of course there isn't both phones are zooming digitally and only at 5x Zoom does the pro Max's Telly lens take over that's important to remember it means that the pro Max only offers better performance for those longer Zoom shots and certainly going above the 5x Point you're really stretching the regular 15s to their limit and this is where the max pulls ahead so now you've got to ask yourself not just if you'll take a lot of Zoom shots but if these will be at least 5x or above to actually see any improvements there will definitely be a small group of people who need this but generally people tend to Zoom only a small amount and the performance with the 15s is surprisingly good so I think it would be hard to justify paying for the pros Telly lens in most situations one way to strengthen the argument for the pros Telly lens would be if you also do a lot of portrait photography the regular 15s are still quite limited with only one and 2x options but the 3x and 5x portraits on the Pro Models definitely offer not just a superior blurred background effect but a more useful focal length for this as well portraits just look better on the pros when it comes to video generally you'll see very little to separate the pros from the 15s stability dynamic range and sharpness are all almost identical it's really just the warmer color processing you see with the pros video quality here is best in class and you've got things like action mode HDR recording and cinematic mode all on the regular 15s so they already offer features well beyond what the average person will end up using anyway but this year the pros extend their Pro level video features including adding log recording to the pro res format again that's something professionals might be especially interested in but there's also spatial video recording coming in the future too to let you capture 3D videos for your Apple Vision Pro I don't exactly think this applies to many people certainly not yet I just wanted to highlight those Pro only video features with night mode this is interesting because the 15s have a wider aperture on the main lens but then the pros have the newer processor and let's face it an expectation that they will perform better but if you think all these photos look pretty much exactly the same I think you're right in the vast majority of situations I didn't spot any significant differences between the pro and non-pro models they were equal in terms of detail captured noise levels and the exposure time certainly in a blind test I don't think anyone could tell them apart the 15s even beat the pros in some situations as we can see here with the dynamic range on occasion I saw hints at the regular 15s wider aperture giving me brighter exposures but this wasn't often and consistent enough to label a true difference from the Pro Models if you look closely at shots from the ultrawide you can sometimes see the pros pull ahead for example here showing less noise which you could attribute to the wide aperture allowing the pros to capture more light the only times I saw a significant improvement with the pros was when zooming the quality gap is Amplified in low light so the pros telephoto lenses do have an edge here you've also got the option of night mode portraits on the pros thanks to the liar scanner and here this allowed me to focus more quickly and accurately with the pro you can see the focuses on my face with the pro as opposed to my jacket with the 15 but it's interesting that the 15s can still capture a portrait mode photo even in this very low light situation that's how good the phones have become the pros also have adaptive true tone Flash and I showed last year how if you're taking shots with the flash then this can give you more natural and realistic colors I'm not a big flash guy myself but that is another Advantage for the pros over the regular 15s with night mode video you can also see the slightly Sharper Image with the pro on the right which I think is thanks to the best better autofocusing capability in low light I wasn't really seeing any advantage of the pro second gen sensor shift image stabilization though you can see the video jolting when my foot hits the ground with both phones so overall the performance is still quite similar and finally with the selfie lens there's basically nothing in it whatsoever and with identical lenses in the phones that does make sense the Pro Image is perhaps slightly warmer in color that fits in with the trend we've seen so far but in terms of image quality you can expect that to be the same on both that applies to the portrait mode too and that improved Edge detection to pick out even fine hairs is something you get with both the regular and Pro Models so this is how the iPhone 15 Compares with the 15 Pro for the selfie video it is the same selfie lens so there's not too much of a difference but I did see slightly richer colors and a little bit more contrast with the regular 15 which I thought was interesting so that just comes down to the difference in the processes but overall there's not a huge difference with the selfie video so overall the pros once again do offer more features and have the slightly better camera performance but Apple has closed the Gap so much in particular on the main lens but also with night mode and even the zoom performance that the regular 15s will be just as good in most situations I would 100% recommend those to most people but if you're really into macro photography need that extended Zoom range or any of the pro features like raw and pro res then you're part of that smaller group for whom the pros are the better choice so the very last thing to compare is the pricing the 15 start at $7.99 and it's $100 extra for the plus-size model whereas the pro start at $9.99 but it's an extra 200 to get the Baseline Pro Max that's because it starts at a higher storage amount whether you want it or not deciding between the 15 and plus is easy as is between the pro and the pro Max it's just a case of whether or not you want a big screen phone with the better battery life but deciding between a pro or the regular iPhones is more interesting and hopefully in this video you've seen exactly what you'd get in spending extra on a pro model here's a summary of that and maybe something here as a deal breaker for you I said in the dedicated review that Apple gave the regular 15s a much bigger upgrade than the pros this in turn has closed the Gap there are fewer reasons to get a pro instead and I think that makes the much better value for money overall in the past people have bought the pros for the higher build quality but now the regular 15s feel Ultra Premium with that same matte back glass and let's face it most of you end up immediately sticking these into phone cases anyway they also bought the pro Max because they wanted a big screen phone or the best battery life well that's why apple offers the 15 in a plus size as well and that's actually the real Battery King other reasons have been the camera but we've seen the massive upgrades the 15's got this year and that perhaps more so than in any previous year the 15's cameras are so close to the pros now that there are only limited use cases where they actually offer an advantage so will you end up using those often enough to justify the price increase I'm not saying don't buy a pro I personally went for a 15 Pro as I said I need that higher refresh rate that's my personal deal breaker I'm just saying don't assume you need the pro because in a lot of instances people don't notice the difference or even end up using the pro features at all the iPhone 15 and 15 plus might surprise you in just how good they are but I want to hear from you what's the deal breaker feature that steered you one way or the other do the 15s offer enough for you or is there a pro feature you simply can't live without if you found this video helpful then please give it a like and also subscribe and hit the notification Bell so you actually get notified when new videos go live thank you very much for watching and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: InsideTech

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Id: yDLXHT8_M4A

Length: 22min 47sec (1367 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 11 2023