iPhone 16 Pro Honest Review after 1 week!

Welcome to Max Tech and this is our review of the iPhone 16 Pro Max. In this review, I'm not gonna tell you the same thing you've heard on every review of this new Pro model phone, which is essentially that it's the most disappointing Pro model in years. But I'm gonna give you a new perspective and explain the psychology behind why everyone feels this way, including a fresh take from my wife who isn't a techie and has been using her and I'll finish it off with my take on how good of an upgrade the 16 Pro Max is this year. About 5 years ago when I reviewed the very first Pro iPhone, the 11 Pro model, I introduced a formula for iPhone upgradability when it comes to regular consumers, so I'm gonna apply that same formula to see if the new 16 Pro Max is a hit or miss. The first piece of the puzzle is for a new iPhone to offer a full package of features that work well together. To be honest, this year's 16 Pro Max didn't really add that much to the full package of features. The previous 15 Pro Max already achieved this and I honestly don't think the features Apple added this year added to the package of features other than maybe the battery life, which has definitely improved, but it just doesn't build too strong of a case by itself. For example, the 48MP ultrawide is a nice upgrade, but it's not what I expected at all. The 48MP mode CANNOT be used for macro photography. It still defaults to 12MP and barely looks any different from macro shots taken on the 16 Plus. On top of that, the 48MP ultrawide did nothing for video recording, which was my biggest issue with it. I expected the sensor to be much bigger, with bigger pixels that take in more light to improve low-light video, but no, there's no difference at all for video. Oh, and the camera control? Yep, it's trash. Apple put it in the wrong spot, especially on the 16 Pro Max model, which makes it really hard to reach, while in landscape mode, it should've been right here. And the amount of options you have with camera control are very limited as well, with the display having more controls like enabling the flash, the live photo mode, the ROM mode and a bunch of other settings like the aspect ratio and more. I'm seriously considering disabling the camera control altogether until Apple updates it to make it ACTUALLY useful. But first, let me show you the newest and coolest curtain lights from our sponsor Govee that makes the best RGB LED smart lights out there. And this year, Govee has the upgraded Gen 2 curtain lights that are super easy to install and have many new features. The first of many is the addition of animated GIFs with over 200 scenes and now 10 customizable canvases. And this time, Govee added an AI lighting bot that brings out your creativity with really unique lighting effects and scenes with a simple text prompt or with a voice assistant like Alexa or Google. You can simply say create a Thanksgiving scene, and the AI lighting bot will give you all the options to choose from and they are endless. With these curtain lights, you also get many features that all Govee smart lights come with, like Dreamview that will sync up all the lighting in your house to a specific scene, or music mode which looks really cool and interactive which is my personal favorite. So definitely check out these upgraded curtain lights from Govee, and I'll have the links in the description and pinned comment below. Now the 16 Pro did get the new 5X telephoto camera which I absolutely love, but for the 16 Pro Max, we already had that on the previous model, so there's no upgrade there. Even the new 45W charging apparently only works when you're doing something like gaming and charging at the same time, sort of offsetting the battery drain, but if it's just charging by itself, there's apparently no improvement in charging speed. The best thing going for it is actually the 25W MagSafe charging support, as well as the better sustained performance for gaming and cooler temperatures in general, that right there is a pretty nice upgrade, but that's about it. Now moving onto the second piece of the formula for upgradability, a new iPhone that you upgrade to has to look and feel different. I don't know, it looks the same to me, and honestly, Max has been mistakenly grabbing his previous 15 Pro Max multiple times, and I even did that this morning when I had to go plug in my 15 Pro Max because it was dead to shoot B-roll for this video, and I accidentally grabbed the new version and plugged it in. They honestly look so similar, if it wasn't for the color, it'd be so hard to tell. On top of that, we have the same titanium, yeah it looks a bit different, but everything else just looks the same. And believe it or not, the regular iPhone 16 models this year saw a huge boost in pre-order volumes, up 48% for the iPhone 16 Plus model, while the Pro models actually went down, and why is that? Well, because the regular 16's look way different, with a brand new camera bump design that looks awesome, as well as all of the new, fresh colors, and that right there has a massive impact on upgrade psychology. The Pro models look basically the same. The camera bumps aren't even any larger like Apple usually does every year. This year, they're the same. Titanium, yep it's the same, colors look basically the same, even the beautiful new desert titanium isn't instantly recognizable for an average consumer. The camera control is hardly noticeable if you're not looking for it, and we have of course the same action button, the same dynamic island on the front, you can hardly even tell that the display size increased from 6.1 to 6.3 inches, and the thing that stands out the most is actually the thinner bezels, but most regular consumers might not even notice. So the new iPhone 16 Pro models absolutely failed on this piece of the upgradeability puzzle. And the third piece of the formula that applied very well when the first Pro model came out is that the new iPhone should sound different. Now obviously we have the same Pro and Pro Max naming as we had before, unfortunately no Ultra model, I think that's actually coming next year, and that Ultra name by itself is gonna be the number one reason why people upgrade to it, which sounds kind of insane, but the psychology behind it is extremely powerful. And just wait until you see the new iPhone Air model, that one is gonna sell like hotcakes because of that Air name. Now for this year's review, I'm actually gonna add a fourth piece of the formula that's specific to the Pro models. They have to have enough exclusive bonus features that people are tempted into paying more for the Pros. And this year, Apple completely botched the lineup by giving the regular 16s way too many new features and not keeping enough just for the Pros. For example, we have the same action button now on the entire lineup, we have the same dynamic island, the same exact display quality and brightness, we have the same good ceramic shield glass that's even stronger, the same 25-watt MagSafe charging speed, the same 45-watt peak charging with wired, the same Wi-Fi 7, the same 6-core CPU layout for the A18 chip with the same 8 gigs of the same speed RAM and the same 16-core Neural Engine, we even have the same brand new camera control and the same new thermal system upgrades and the same exact Apple Intelligence features. So looking at everything Apple added to the regular 16 models this year, you might think that Apple is insane for doing this since it would obviously impact the sales of the Pro models which we know it did looking at pre-order data, but the more I started thinking about it, I finally realized that Apple did this on purpose. What if Apple intentionally made the regular models really good this year, knowingly sacrificing their average iPhone sales price, which by the way, relies on Pro model sales, in an effort to boost sales of the entire iPhone 16 series in general. Perhaps it also has something to do with getting as many Android users to switch over as possible for them to get hooked on the new Apple Intelligence features that nobody else has or can easily copy, and while the features aren't here yet, Apple Intelligence is gonna be a slam dunk in terms of beating their competition. But for the time being, this was actually one of my wife's biggest disappointments after a week with her iPhone 16 Pro, so let's jump into her perspective to give you a good idea of the psychology behind someone who upgraded yet isn't a tech enthusiast. The first thing she asked when I showed her the camera control button was how do I do the new visual intelligence scanning thing, and when I told her that it's not coming for months, she replied then why did Apple announce it, with instant disappointment in her voice. She also thought the camera control was weird and not really useful or valuable, and she said she probably isn't gonna use it since it's faster to just use the display controls. She did like that the display is a bit bigger and she didn't feel like it was harder to hold, which was very nice, and she also liked the thinner bezels as well. She also loved the 5x telephoto camera being a huge upgrade in zoom quality compared to the 3x on her previous 15 Pro. She was also surprised by the battery life improvement, saying that it seems to last longer, and she said she forgot to charge it last night, and at 11.30am it was still at 50%, which was pretty impressive. To her, she said it feels fresh and new, but that might partially be because of the brand new screen protector, case and wallet, but other than that, it basically looks and feels like the same phone as before, especially since she got the white titanium finish again. But now finishing off with my thoughts on how good of an upgrade this new 16 Pro Max is compared to previous years, it's honestly the worst year over year upgrade I've seen in years. Now I say that as someone who's gonna upgrade every year regardless because that's my job, but for anyone else, especially anyone who is currently budgeting, I say absolutely DO NOT upgrade because this phone looks and feels basically the same as last year's model. And spoiler alert, I have a pretty good feeling that we're gonna get that new iPhone Ultra model next year, and that phone is gonna look, sound and feel much different, giving you a more satisfying upgrade, at least psychologically. But the regular iPhone 16's on the other hand, those are clearly the models that people should be upgrading to this year, but I'll leave those details for our review of the regular 16's. So hopefully you enjoyed this honest review after one week, and if you did, go ahead and subscribe above for more videos like this one, and definitely check out our blind camera test right over there. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you in the next video!