Apple's biggest phone to date excels as a photographic tool, especially in the dark.

It sets a new bar for low-light photography, even if the bar isn't drastically higher than the competition. If you like big phones, you'll love the massive screen. Excellent battery life. Also makes phone calls.

Expensive. No 120-Hz refresh rate or USB-C port, two features commonly found on other large phones at this price.

iPhone 12 Pro Max wipes floors with the competition and has the best camera we have seen so far.

The fastest smartphone on the market, excellent camera with sublime image and video quality, bright mobile screen with true-to-life color reproduction, 5G, waterproof and robust, MagSafe integrated.

Screen with 60 Hz refresh rate. Supplied without charger. Pricey price.

It’s an iPhone 12 Pro, only bigger. The super-long battery life is the real draw here, while the improved camera doesn’t offer much benefit over the already-fantastic iPhone 12 Pro.

Best battery life ever in an iPhone, A slightly better camera than the iPhone 12 Pro, Blazing fast performance

Camera improvements are minimal

The iPhone 12 Pro Max is the best iPhone money can buy, with an immersive 6.7-inch display, amazing cameras, 5G and the longest battery life. The iPhone 12 Pro Max lives up to its name in a few key ways. You get a much bigger display than the regular iPhone 12 Pro and much longer battery life.

Best-in-class cameras, Excellent battery life, Immersive 6.7-inch display, Superior performance, Convenient MagSafe charging

Charger sold separately, A bit heavy and bulky, No 120Hz display

Now that it is six months old, how does the Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max fare? We give it another whirl to see how it holds up....

It was in some ways frustrating for the iPhone 12 Pro Max to launch a month later than the iPhone 12 Pro, because we couldn’t immediately compare them side by side. But working under those constraints has provided me with extensive time using the iPhone 12 Pro, so now that I finally have a 12 Pro Max in my hands, I can leverage that considerable experience with the platform. That lets me evaluate the three huge things (emphasis on huge) that differentiate the iPhone 12 Pro Max: The size of the phone, its subsequently larger battery, and its improved camera system. The “Max” iPhones have a short history, but have gained an extremely enthusiastic following. Some people have seen the value of having a huge iPhone and never looked back. For those people, the iPhone 12 Pro Max is wonderful — it’s yet another huge iPhone, brought up to the modern era of Apple hardware design and features. If you like the design of the new iPhones, as I do, you’ll love that you just get more of it in the 12 P...

Large and beautiful display; Excellent hardware quality; Top-notch camera experience; Long battery life;

Incredibly large; Very heavy;

Excellent new design; Impressive camera set-up; Lovely large display; Almost unreasonably powerful;

No ProMotion/120Hz display; Edges are a fingerprint magnet; Lightning instead of USB-C; Big, bulky and heavy;

The Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max is the biggest of the iPhone 12 series. The new iPhone costs higher than the rest and it comes with a bigger battery and also bigger inbuilt storage. It has an impressive quad cameras set-up and a large screen display size.

The iPhone 12 Pro Max ($1,099 at Amazon) follows in the footsteps of the 7 Plus and gets camera upgrades that none of the other iPhone 12 models have. At its core the iPhone 12 Pro Max, like all the phones in the iPhone 12 family (the iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Mini), has a bunch of things going for it like a new flat-sided design reminiscent of the iPhone 5 and iPad Pro. It has support for 5G, an OLED screen with support for HDR, a ceramic shield covering, an A14 Bionic processor, support for MagSafe wireless charging and it can be submerged to a depth of 6 meters (just under 20 feet) for up to 30 minutes. If you want a deeper assessment of any of these features, take a look at my iPhone 12 and 12 Pro review.

With a big battery, outstanding cameras and the largest screen ever on an iPhone, the 12 Pro Max has big phone energy.

Premium design and build; Outstanding cameras; Great battery life; 5G support;

The large camera bump; The lack of iPadOS-like features;

Excellent new design; Impressive camera set-up; Lovely large display; Almost unreasonably powerful;

No ProMotion/120Hz display; Edges are a fingerprint magnet; Lightning instead of USB-C; Big, bulky and heavy;