Apple iPhone 11 Pro Review (2024)

What makes an iPhone "pro?" It seems to be three things: more cameras, longer battery life, and better LTE performance. Any of these factors can be why you choose an iPhone 11 Pro ($999 and up) or iPhone 11 Pro Max ($1,099 and up) over the $699 iPhone 11. Of course, you'll notice a big gap in price there. The iPhone Pros are absolutely better than the iPhone 11, as well as the rest of Apple's phones that are still on sale. But are they $300 or more better? That depends on how much value you place on the pro-level improvements.

Physical Body and Display

Another thing pro means is that your iPhone is less slippery. The iPhone Pros come in four colors—gold, gray, green, and silver—with a sort of shimmery matte finish on their glass backs. I find them noticeably grippier than the shiny glass iPhone 11, although you'll probably still want to put these costly phones into cases for safekeeping. A case will also help to smooth out the rather sharp camera bump, which holds the three rear lenses.

The Pro is just a little bit bigger than the iPhone XS, and noticeably bigger than earlier iPhones, at 5.67 by 2.81 by 0.32 inches (HWD) and 6.63 ounces. The Pro Max is the same size as the iPhone XS Max at 6.20 by 3.06 by 0.30 inches and 7.97 ounces. The Pro Max is noticeably heavy—it's the heaviest mainstream phone I can think of, in large part thanks to its big, dense 4,000mAh battery.

Both phones have 458ppi OLED displays that are noticeably brighter than last year's OLED models. According to Dr. Ray Soneira of DisplayMate Labs, the new displays are 17 percent brighter and 15 percent more power-efficient than last year's, with color that is "visually indistinguishable from perfect." Soneira points out that the latest Apple and Samsung displays are all great; they're getting better year over year.

The Pro Max's 6.5-inch display isn't any denser than the Pro's 5.8-inch screen; it just has more real estate. In real life, that translates into four more lines of text in the Mail app per screen, or visibly more of a web page.

The balancing factor, of course, is how easy you find the Pro Max to hold. I do not find a phone that's wider than three inches to be a one-handed phone, but that's ultimately a question of personal taste.

Apple has decided not to adopt what I think is the most exciting new trend in displays: high-refresh rate screens, like the 90Hz panel on the OnePlus 7 Pro and the 120Hz screen on the iPad Pro. I think higher refresh rates make displays noticeably smoother and more restful on the eyes. They seem to make more of a difference on Android though, because Android has always had problems with overwrought UI animations that Apple tends to avoid.

Like previous iPhones, the Pro models have Lightning rather than USB-C ports, no headphone jacks, and they're waterproof. Apple seems to be very committed to maintaining its Lightning accessory revenue at the expense of broader compatibility or convenience, but as this has been going on for several years, iPhone fans are pretty used to it by now.

Processor and Performance

Apple's new A13 processor, which is the same in all three new iPhones, is the fastest mobile processor currently available. It's 40 percent faster than last year's iPhone XS Max on Geekbench multicore and compute/AI measures, 16 percent faster on web rendering, and 36 percent better on an off-screen GFXBench graphics benchmark. It's also considerably faster than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 in the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ and other leading Android phones. (That's in part because Qualcomm and Apple launch chips six months apart from each other; Qualcomm will have a new one coming out in December.)

The A13 enables one key feature, the new Night mode in the camera, which is a huge deal. It probably also enables the multi-camera modes in Filmic Pro, a big leap forward for filmmakers who want to be able to frame shots with the new iPhones' wide-angle and zoom cameras.

But otherwise, I can't find any apps that really push the new processor yet. That's typical with iPhone releases, but I think this year is special—there aren't popular apps that push the A12 that hard, either. Apple was promoting augmented reality for a little while as a new capability that would need new processors, but AR seems to be in a bit of a lull right now.

See How We Test Phones

This all goes to say that the A13 in itself doesn't feel like a huge differentiator, especially over the A12. As with a lot of things about these phones, it really depends on what you're comparing them with. Do you still have an iPhone 6? Then yes, apps launch much faster and videos export an order of magnitude more quickly.

iOS 13 has made things interesting over my review period. Initially, my review phones were pretty buggy, with apps quitting and crashing occasionally. iOS 13 has been through multiple bug-fixes and upgrades since I got the phones, however, which is an advantage of iPhones. Most Android phones get software upgrades rarely if at all.

Wireless Capabilities and Battery Life

The iPhone Pros have major advantages over the iPhone 11 in both the wireless and battery departments. As I show in my in-depth look at the iPhone 11 series LTE performance, the Pro and Pro Max have 4x4 MIMO, an antenna improvement that can nearly double maximum LTE speeds over the iPhone 11 and iPhone XR. 4x4 MIMO has other benefits, too. As long as you're in a place that relies on the middle LTE bands (like 2, 4, 30 and 66) as opposed to the low-frequency long-range bands (like 5, 12, and 71), it means considerably better reception.

If you're switching up from a much older iPhone on AT&T or T-Mobile, you'll get considerably better coverage on this year's phones. Last year's iPhones introduced LTE bands 14 and 71, which are long-distance, low-frequency bands that extend coverage on those two carriers.

The iPhone line is the only mainstream phone in the US to support dual-SIM functionality. It's a popular feature abroad that has largely been locked out of US phones because the carriers don't like it very much. New iPhones (including last year's models) take one physical SIM and one eSIM, allowing you to add a secondary line on AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, or a range of foreign carriers.

All the new phones also have Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5 with Apple's W1 quick-pairing chip, and the new U1 ultra-wideband positioning chip. My tests didn't find those to be big differentiators, however. Wi-Fi 6 didn't change much when paired with a Wi-Fi 6 router, and the U1 chip isn't used for anything meaningful right now.

The iPhone Pros have the same phone-calling prowess as the iPhone 11, with support for carrier Wi-Fi and LTE calling, along with the best possible EVS codec for super-high-quality sound and a relatively powerful speakerphone. Apple's phones have been fine for calling for several years now.

The battery is a bright spot. I got 7 hours, 13 minutes of video playback time on the iPhone 11 Pro and 8 hours, 9 minutes on the 11 Pro Max, which is much longer than I saw on previous generations of iPhones or on the iPhone 11. The video playback times still don't measure up to the 10-plus hours I tend to see on high-end Android phones, but that really tends to wash out considering that iPhones are far, far better than Android devices when it comes to not using battery with the screen off. Leave an Android phone sitting for several hours quietly, and background processes tend to suck out the battery; you see a lot less of that with iPhones.

A new 18-watt included charger makes a huge difference when it comes to charging these impressive batteries. With its old five-watt charger, the iPhone 11 takes more than three hours to fill its battery; with the 18-watt charger, the iPhone 11 Pro Max took only 1 hour, 50 minutes to charge. Have only 20 minutes? That took our iPhone 11 Pro Max from 0 to 34 percent.

Night Mode Makes the Camera

Battery life is great, but you're probably coming to the iPhone Pro line for the cameras. Start off with this piece by our lead camera analyst, Jim Fisher, where he takes a deep dive into the iPhone 11 Pro's camera performance. I'll sum it up here.

Both Pro models have the same cameras. On the back, there are regular, wide-angle, and 2x zoom 12MP shooters; on the front, there's a 7MP selfie camera and an infrared Face ID camera. The iPhone 11 is missing the 2x zoom, possibly because you can fake it with digital zoom.

Adding the third camera gives you some extra unexpected flexibility: You can switch between 1x and 2x in portrait/bokeh mode, something you weren't able to do on last year's iPhones.

Not sold yet? Night mode might do the trick. Apple's Night mode combines a whole bunch of frames to make dramatic improvements in low-light performance, and it's adjustable based on how long you're willing to wait and how much light you want to add. Google's Pixel and Huawei phones already have dramatic night modes like this, but this is the first time we're seeing this big leap on iPhones. The new system requires the A13 processor, so it isn't coming to older models.

Apple's camera software, and third-party camera apps, are still way ahead of your average Android phone when it comes to responsiveness. Tapping the shutter button takes pictures instantly, and third-party apps like Flimic Pro add options like recording with multiple cameras at once.

Comparisons and Conclusions

The 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max are the best iPhones you can buy. But Apple and the mobile industry have a lot coming over the next few years. We're almost certainly going to see a 5G iPhone next year, and possibly a pair of companion AR glasses. By telling you to buy a super-expensive iPhone 11 Pro now, am I preventing you from taking advantage of next year's greater innovations? Maybe.

That said, if you're still holding onto an iPhone 6, and you want to upgrade to the best iPhone you can get today, by all means go out and get an iPhone 11 Pro—the difference in performance will astound you. As for which one to get, that largely comes down to whether you prefer medium or large phones. But keep in mind the iPhone 11 Pro Max is the first iPhone to truly compete on battery tests with top Android phones. That gives it a slight edge, albeit a costly one.