Key Takeaways
- Apple's iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max went on sale September 18, priced $100 above last year's models at $1,199 and $1,299 for the same 256GB starting tier.
- CNN Underscored logged more than 30 hours of continuous 4K video on the Pro Max, the longest result in the outlet's testing history — but independent web-browsing benchmarks found real-world gains closer to single digits.
- The Pro Max now weighs 249 grams, 16 grams heavier than its predecessor and the most any non-folding iPhone has weighed, which reviewers tie to a much larger internal cooling system.
- Wired and Engadget scored the new Pro models 9 out of 10 and The Verge gave them 8 out of 10, but nearly every major review lands on the same conclusion: a strong phone, a modest upgrade.
Apple's iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max reached buyers on September 18, about a week after being unveiled alongside the company's first folding phone, and the resulting wave of reviews is unusually consistent for a device carrying a $100 higher price tag. Rather than splitting critics into camps, outlets from Wired to The Verge are converging on a similar read: genuinely faster, cooler-running, longer-lasting hardware wrapped around an upgrade that many current Pro owners won't feel pressed to buy.
A battery number that depends on how you measure it
Apple rates the 18 Pro Max at up to 45 hours of video playback and the smaller 18 Pro at up to 36 hours, gains of roughly 15% and 9% over last year's published figures. CNN Underscored's own lab test told a similar story, clocking the Pro Max past 30 hours of continuous 4K playback, a number the outlet says it has never recorded before, more than eight hours longer than last year's iPhone 17 Pro Max. Run through a different kind of test, the gap narrows sharply. On Tom's Guide's standard web-browsing benchmark, the Pro Max lasted 18 hours and 27 minutes — only about half an hour longer than its predecessor — while TechRadar ran the identical test and used the results to question whether Apple's "largest battery increase" claim survives outside of pure video playback. Which number matters depends on how someone actually uses the phone: a heavy video-streamer will likely feel the difference, while a browsing-and-apps user may notice something closer to a modest bump than a leap.
A variable aperture finally arrives
Both new Pro models carry a 48-megapixel main sensor built around six laser-cut blades that physically shift between four settings, from f/1.48 to f/4.0 — the first mechanical aperture Apple has put inside an iPhone. 9to5Mac's testing found the effect most noticeable at night, where the wider opening pulls in extra light, and in close-up shots, where narrowing the aperture keeps more of the frame in focus; in ordinary daylight scenes the difference is far harder to spot. Engadget's review reached a similar conclusion, adding that the new Pro-level manual controls for aperture, shutter speed and focus finally give photographers the fine adjustment they've wanted since Apple introduced the dedicated Camera Control button two iPhone generations back.
Cooling gets rebuilt, and the weight goes up with it
Apple kept last year's aluminum unibody but paired it with a next-generation vapor chamber that MacRumors reports covers roughly three times the surface area of the prior design. That added thermal headroom is why the A20 Pro, Apple's first chip built on a 2-nanometer process, can hold onto up to 40% more of its peak performance under sustained load — though lab testing shows that gain lands mostly on the Pro Max, whose stability score jumped nearly 15 points over last year's model while the smaller Pro improved only marginally. None of that hardware is weightless: the Pro Max now tips the scale at 249 grams versus 233 grams a year ago, a 16-gram jump that makes it the heaviest non-folding iPhone Apple has built. Apple hasn't issued a formal explanation for the increase, but MacRumors and Engadget both point to that larger cooling assembly and an enlarged camera module as the likely sources of the added mass.
Charging finally catches up
Reviewers agree charging speed is where this year's improvement is least ambiguous. With a compatible 60-watt-or-higher charger, both new Pro models can reach 50% in about 15 minutes, down from 20 minutes last year, and independent testing found the Pro Max can go from empty to full in under an hour for the first time. MacRumors' teardown of a real-world charging test recorded a peak of 52 watts, well above last year's 36-watt ceiling — a change that reviewers across the board single out as one of the cycle's clearest, least debatable upgrades.
A back panel that finally matches
Externally, the new Pro models are nearly identical in size to last year's, but Apple redesigned the rear glass to blend into the aluminum frame instead of standing out against it. 9to5Mac's Chance Miller said the new color-matched back "looks fantastic," a fix for a two-tone look that pushed some iPhone 17 Pro buyers toward cases they might otherwise have skipped. GSMArena's hands-on confirmed the same shift, while joking that with only a chip update, camera tweaks and new colors to show for it, the phone "could very well have been called the 17S Pro Max."
Strong scores, a shared verdict
The published numbers line up neatly: Wired and Engadget each rated the new Pro models 9 out of 10, and The Verge landed at 8 out of 10, according to figures gathered across multiple review compilations. Outlets diverge slightly on how much the new camera controls matter day to day — in a roundup published by MacRumors, The Verge's Allison Johnson summed the phone up as "excellent and utterly iterative," while Wired's reviewer described leaning on the new aperture settings instead of standard portrait mode. On the value question, Engadget's Cherlynn Low was blunter: "I don't believe you're getting more phone for the money," a sentiment several reviewers echoed even while still recommending the phones to anyone coming from an iPhone 16 Pro or older.
What's coming next
Apple used the same September 9 event to introduce its first folding iPhone, the iPhone Duo, while confirming that the standard iPhone 18, a new iPhone 18e, and a second-generation iPhone Air won't arrive until spring 2027. That leaves anyone who normally buys a non-Pro iPhone without a fall option this year, funneling nearly all of the immediate upgrade conversation toward the two Pro models reviewed here.
The bottom line
Taken together, the reviews describe a phone that's measurably better than last year's by nearly every metric Apple controls, and considerably more modest by the ones it doesn't. Whether an extra $100, an extra 16 grams, and a battery boost that shrinks or grows depending on how it's tested add up to a worthwhile upgrade looks, so far, like a question of how long it's been since your last one.
