iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max review: High quality for high prices

Last year, Apple's iPhone XR was the interesting story in the iPhone lineup, while the top-end iPhone XS was only a modest update over its predecessor the iPhone X. But this year, the roles have flipped: the iPhone 11 Pro is a notable step forward for the flagship tier, while the iPhone 11 is only a slight improvement over the iPhone XR as the company's latest entry-level new phone.

With the iPhone 11 Pro, the best smartphone display on the market just got significantly better, the fastest smartphone CPU and GPU got even faster, and Apple caught up to competitors with new camera features.

If anything, though, the past two years of new iPhones have demonstrated that many people's habits of upgrading every two years should be amended to every three or even four years. And there’s nothing here to convince you to switch to an iPhone if you already weren’t interested in Apple’s ecosystem of devices, software, and services. Apart from the fact that iOS 13 opened things up a bit for power users this year, all the strengths and weaknesses of Apple as compared to Android remain the same.

For those who know they want an iPhone, the iPhone 11 is a better deal than the flagships based on our recent time with both handsets—and we'll publish a short review of that phone in the next few days. But for those who want an iPhone and the cutting edge of smartphone tech, the iPhone 11 Pro is the best new iPhone in quite some time. It might not really be "pro," but it's as quality as it gets.

Specifications

The iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max are just barely heavier and thicker than the XS and XS Max. The iPhone 11 Pro comes in at 5.67×2.81×0.32 inches (144×71.4×8.1mm) and weighs 6.38 ounces (88 grams). The iPhone 11 Pro Max measures 6.22×3.06×0.32 inches (158×77.8×8.1mm) and 7.97 ounces (26 grams).

Some users have criticized Apple for focusing on ever-thinning iPhones over battery life and other improvements in the past, but this continues a gradual, intermittent march up in thickness over the past few years. It’s not significantly thicker, but it definitely isn’t thinner.

Both phones come in 64GB, 256GB, and 512GB configurations, and prices range from $999 for a 64GB iPhone 11 Pro to $1,449 for the 512GB iPhone 11 Pro Max.

The heart of these new phones is Apple’s A13 system-on-a-chip, which Apple claims is up to 20% faster than last year’s A12 at CPU, GPU, and machine learning tasks. (We’ll put some of that to the test later in the review.)

New in the A13 is a new piece of silicon called the U1, an ultra wideband wireless chip intended to give the iPhones spatial awareness of other nearby devices. In iOS 13.1, Apple introduced the first use of this chip: the ability to physically point your phone at another iPhone to wirelessly share files via the existing AirDrop service. But we could see many other applications for this in the future, including iOS 13’s Find My app or multi-user augmented-reality applications. For now, though, it’s largely untapped.

Also on the subject of wireless, Apple has brought Wi-Fi 6 to the iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max. Wi-Fi 6 is a very new standard, but its spec has been finalized, so there’s little risk in Apple future-proofing with this even though most consumers don’t have any other Wi-Fi 6 hardware yet. As a standard, Wi-Fi 6 claims to offer up to 50% faster Wi-Fi speeds, plus lower latency in environments with many wireless devices present at once.

Both flagship iPhones claim faster LTE speeds and up to 30 LTE bands when compared to last year’s models. While we weren't able to test this consistently in this dense, LTE-troubled part of Los Angeles, others have confirmed the claim.

There was a lot of wild speculation about how much RAM the new iPhones would have, but teardowns and other investigations performed by the community over the past several days have confirmed that both of these new phones have 4GB of RAM, as does the lower-priced iPhone 11 (sans “Pro”).

Apple says the phones have an IP68 water resistance rating and that the phones can handle up to 30 minutes at four meters of depth. The company also claims the phone’s back has been made more durable compared to prior models, with stronger glass.

Lightning and headphones: Yep, still frustrating

As has been the case for a few years now, these phones have only one port each: Apple’s proprietary Lightning connector. Sorry, USB-C advocates! The phones include Apple’s EarPods Lightning headphones out of the box, but unlike some earlier phones, they do not include 3.5mm headphone jack adapters for use with other headphones.

Apple co-markets the iPhone and AirPods, and it hands over a review unit of AirPods alongside any iPhone review units to any press reviewing the phone, indicating the company really expects users to shell out for AirPods instead of relying on wired headphones for an optimal experience.

As I’ve written before, AirPods work wonderfully, and once I got used to them it was hard to imagine going back to wired headphones. But it is still a (too) big ask to expect users to spend nearly $200 on top of the already high prices of these phones for an elegant personal audio solution.

Batteries and power

Apple doesn’t typically disclose battery capacity in its spec sheets to reviewers or the public, but regulatory findings have indicated that the iPhone 11 Pro has a 3,046 mAh battery, and the iPhone 11 Pro Max sports 3,969 mAh. That’s up from 2,658 mAh and 3,174 mAh for 2018’s XS and XS Max, respectively.

Apple claims that significant efficiency improvements in the A13 will result in up to four hours' longer battery life than the iPhone XS for the iPhone 11 Pro, and up to five hours longer than the iPhone XS Max for the iPhone 11 Pro Max.

If true, this means the biggest single-year leap in battery life ever for iPhones—something consumers have been demanding for a long, long time.

Also exciting is the inclusion of an 18-watt charger, dramatically up from 5 watts in every iPhone for ages before these. As we got closer to these huge battery capacities over the past couple of years, it became very clear that the 5-watt charger wasn’t cutting it.

This new one is similar to those that ship with iPads, and it has a USB-C connector, so now you’re using a Lightning-to-USB-C cable instead of Lightning-to-USB-A.

Display

When the iPhone X hit in 2017, I called it the best display ever in a smartphone. The true blacks and outstanding contrast of OLED, combined with Apple’s impeccable tuning and color accuracy, made an incredible impact. More than Face ID or other touted features, I consider the display to be the main reason to buy an iPhone X, XS, or 11 Pro over one of Apple’s cheaper phones.

The iPhone XS made some small improvements, but the iPhone 11 Pro takes an outstanding screen and turns it up to 1,200—1,200 nits of brightness, that is. That’s the theoretical maximum that you might see in some HDR content, anyway. Apple says 800 nits maximum brightness is typical when you crank it up under sunlight.

That’s a vast improvement over 670 nits in the iPhone XS. When I reviewed that phone, I wrote that, as good as the display was, it couldn’t really do HDR movies and the like the way today’s best TVs can because those TVs frequently hit 1,000 nits of brightness.

Maximum brightness is critically important for rich content like movies, photos, and games because it increases the potential contrast ratio, allowing for more granular detail not just between black and white but in colors as well. It’s the heart of what HDR is all about.

I watched snippets of Blade Runner 2049 and the new Godzilla movie—both outstanding showcases for HDR—and felt that the iPhone 11 Pro’s display matched a $2,500 LG OLED television in quality. It’s quite an achievement.

And there’s the added and more practical benefit that the phone should be easier to read under sunlight when the brightness is maxed out. (I found this to be true in my time with the phones.)

Even though flagship phones from Samsung offer similar or even a little higher peak brightness levels, the iPhone displays have more accurate color and other optimizations that make them superior regardless. Although once you get to this level, it might only be the real display tech geeks who notice.

Apple uses the eye-roll-inducing term “Super Retina Display XDR” to describe this display. And while I think the phrase is ridiculous, confusing, and unhelpful in that it sounds hyped but has no connection to any industry standard, it nevertheless is assigned to a remarkable, best-in-class panel.

Apple has a penchant for giving features or specs weird proprietary names, contributing to an industry problem of confused consumers being unable to tell which made-up marketing terms refer to real benefits versus those that are nonsense. In this case, there’s proof in this pudding. But between you and me, let’s just call it HDR, even though Apple confirmed to me that this is still an 8-bit, not a 10-bit, panel.

If I were Apple, I’d be singing HDR from the rooftops, because this is the first phone the company has made with the contrast and brightness capabilities to really earn the label. Apple's specs page for the phone does say HDR, but the proprietary branding has the potential to confuse.

In any case, this is a fantastic screen, and it remains one of the main reasons to buy this phone over the more affordable iPhone 11.

Audio

That’s not the end for media-consumption-related improvements. The iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max have a feature called spatial audio. Essentially, that means simulated surround sound from stereo speakers, with Dolby Atmos support.

Dolby Atmos’ benefits for stereo speakers are limited—it really shines in theater surround sound systems with five or more speakers—but it’s nice to have. While the audio does not have presence like what you would get from the aurally strong 2018 iPad Pro, I noticed a marked improvement over the iPhone XS.

You’ll still probably want headphones most of the time, but if you have to watch a video or listen to a song on the phone’s speakers for some reason, it’s a better experience than before.