iPhone 13 Pro in 2026 - worth it? (Review)

Released Fall 2021, the iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max were almost surprisingly big upgrades to the 12 Pro, bringing critical changes and improvements to the camera setup, battery life, and of course the display, with a smaller notch and ProMotion, finally giving us that 120Hz refresh rate in a far more buttery smooth iOS experience than ever possible before. And almost a half decade later on iOS 26, the 13 Pro really doesn't yet feel its age, sort of. The lack of Dynamic Island and the Lightning port here instead of USB-C does quickly give away that this is an older Pro iPhone, but it is still very much a Pro iPhone, with a beautiful design and performance that may actually surprise you. Hey how's it going, I'm Josh from 91Tech, and any phone near 5 years old is going to have its drawbacks, and of course the 13 Pro is no exception, especially if you're finding your battery is struggling to hold a charge after years of use. But the core of this phone and everything around it has held up incredibly well, and while I wouldn't necessarily recommend buying a 13 Pro today, and you might be ready for an upgrade if you're still on one, I do think there is a real case to be made here for the 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max still being a rather ideal smartphone experience in 2026. So in this video we're going to explore exactly what makes the iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max so great, as well as the downsides that have come with time. Today we ask the question, how does the iPhone 13 Pro hold up almost 5 years later? This iPhone 13 Pro that I have here in my hand is actually the original model I bought myself at launch all the way back in 2021. Actually, if I recall right, there was a problem with my order and it got sent through 3 times and I was sent 3 iPhones, so I had to return a couple of them, but this was a huge upgrade for me coming off the non-Pro iPhone 12, and I would use the phone for a year before upgrading to the 14 Pro in 2022 and selling this phone to my brother. He would then use it for the next few years before just recently getting my 15 Pro Max, and so now I've got my old phone back. Thus the question does arise, with about 4 years of no doubt heavy usage between the Well, the answer is, on the whole, pretty good. Maybe even great, minus the battery life at this point. Cosmetically at least, the phone's done pretty well, though my brother's lack of a screen protector means the display has ended up with plenty of scratches, especially near the edges. Not a big deal, and the rest of the phone still looks pretty good, thanks in large part to us having always used a case with it. And I mean, okay, let's be real here, this phone looks really, really good. I love this design, with the flat, sharp, polished stainless steel frame and frosted While this design is essentially identical to the one brought with the iPhone 12 Pro, there's no question it makes for a beautiful device, and I've got no complaints with the 13 Pro being practically unchanged from that phone. The edges are a bit sharp in the hand compared to the 15 Pro and newer, but there is still this feeling of refinement that is just lacking from the newer Pro iPhones for me in comparison. Specifically the all-aluminum 17 Pro, though I do love that orange color. Then there's the camera setup on the back there, which was pretty large back in 2021, but kinda small by today's standards, I suppose. It was the ultimate 12-megapixel trifecta of lenses versus the ultimate 48-megapixel trifecta we have today, and it has held up quite well, but we'll take a look at photography in a bit. For colors, the 13 Pro would originally get silver, graphite, gold, and sierra blue. And then later there was this alpine green added, harkening back to the midnight green of the 11 Pro, which was I guess only a couple generations prior. I do like that Apple added a new color mid-cycle, kind of a fun way to keep things interesting, and more colors is always of course welcome. I do have the graphite model here, this was the first black iPhone I had owned in a very long time actually, with 256 gigs of storage. The 13 Pro does start with 128, but I opted for more space in order to be able to record ProRes video in 4K, which is capped at 1080p on the cheaper model. And there are also storage options up to 1 terabyte if you're a crazy person and want a 1 terabyte 13 Pro for some reason in 2026. Back in the day, the 13 Pro with 128 gigs started at $999, as was the standard for the time, and it's managed to retain a surprising chunk of that value on the used market. We'll talk a little later about the used market and actually potentially buying one of these nowadays, but first let's discuss the worst aged element of not just this phone but really any used smartphone ever, battery life. Going to settings, battery, and then battery health and charging, you can see immediately this phone is telling me that its battery health is significantly degraded and ought to be serviced. The maximum capacity is at 78% of what it originally came with, and while this was still enough to get my brother a day's use with light to maybe moderate usage, it was definitely tight enough for him to keep a charger nearby at times. He is far happier with his new 15 Pro Max and its much healthier battery in comparison. Were the battery here replaced, it would perform much better and Apple will do that for a fee, but almost $100 just for that might seem hefty when you can instead put that money towards a new iPhone altogether, and that's generally what I would recommend doing when it comes to a phone this old. I'll link my iPhone buying guide in the description if you're curious, but the 13 Pro in spite of its age is right on the fringe of where a battery replacement might genuinely still be worth doing purely because of how great this phone still can be. If I had a 13 Pro Max, for example, I'd probably consider it more so than just the regular 13 Pro. The battery life was also originally one of the best aspects of this phone as the 13 Pro saw a crazy 5 hour jump in video playback over the 12 Pro, and the 13 Pro Max, get this, got an 8 hour jump over the 12 Pro Max. This is one of the biggest leaps we've ever seen in a single year and possibly the biggest when it comes to real life usage rather than just video playback benchmarks. Speaking from experience, it was a huge wake up going from the non-Pro iPhone 12 to even just the smaller 13 Pro. While the Max in particular is a beast for battery life, the smaller 13 Pro was no slouch, and no matter what I threw at it, I could never kill it within just a day. For added perspective on just how great that 13 Pro Max battery was, Apple's brand new iPhone 17 gets 30 hours of video playback, the iPhone Air 27 hours, versus 28 on the 2021 smartphone. That is crazy, as it stands tall as still to this day, one of the best performers that Apple has ever made. But again, it's an older phone now, so the battery health will inevitably degrade over time and even with a battery replacement, you're never going to get the same level of performance on the newer, more power hungry software updates. Though with decent battery health, I think a day's use is still a reasonable expectation, especially for the Max. Performance on the whole here, assuming your battery isn't causing you issues, is still quite spiffy from my experience thus far, almost surprisingly so. The A15 Bionic chipset here with 6GB of RAM was top of the line in 2021, and it still holds up well, with my fresh install of iOS 26 just flying in that beautiful 120 frames per second. I think the extra RAM over the non-Pro iPhone 13 does really help, as this phone really does feel faster to me than my iPhone 13, as well as a 13 mini I recently picked up, and it's also probably helped by the fact that this is indeed a fresh install of iOS 26, so there's no worry of a bunch of old apps from years of use bloating things down. If you're getting close to full for storage, you may find things are a bit slower, but again for me here, iOS 26 is currently running great, and this phone just doesn't feel like it's a near half decade old already. Of course what also really helps it feel fresh is just the display itself, so let's talk about that. We've naturally got two size options that are identical outside of the size and bigger battery in the bigger model, the 6.1 inch iPhone 13 Pro and 6.7 inch iPhone 13 Pro Max, with relatively slim bezels, and this now smaller notch, which was a first for Apple at the time. This was largely doable because they moved the cutout for the earpiece to the top of the phone, and it does make a big difference in helping these phones feel more modern, with Face ID itself still as great as ever here as it consistently unlocks quickly. The screen in general also just still looks great, being plenty vibrant and sharp, and it doesn't get as bright as newer iPhones, it's really not a big deal, maybe a slight annoyance when you're outdoors in direct sunlight, but most times it's totally fine. And the biggest point of improvement with this display over the 12 Pro was naturally ProMotion, as the refresh rate was up from 60 to 120Hz for the first time on iPhone, meaning 120 frames per second in everything from gaming to just swiping around the user interface. It makes for a far, far smoother feeling iOS experience, and it is a feature that isn't strictly necessary to have, but is still one that you kind of want to have, it's really nice, and it's hard to go back once you're used to it. And what really helps this phone feel newer is the fact that it took so long for Apple to bring ProMotion to the non-Pro iPhones. It was only just with the iPhone 17 series, 4 years after this phone launched, that you would see the non-Pro models get ProMotion. This is just dumb by the way, Apple waited far too long, but in the very least it has helped the 13 Pro age even better in hindsight. We don't have the always-on display here, which was brought to the 14 Pro the next year, and is again another thing that was exclusive to the Pro iPhones until the 17 series in 2025. It's a quality of life feature that is by no means a deal breaker. The dynamic island though being absent does feel a bit worse for me going back to this phone, as I'm now very accustomed to having it be a part of my day-to-day life and how I use my phone. You've got your media always up there, your navigation and so on and so forth, it's really convenient, but again it is something that isn't strictly necessary, particularly if you've never used an iPhone with the dynamic island anyways. It's not exactly fair for me to switch over from my fancy expensive 17 Pro to the 13 Pro and then complain about an absence of some features that 13 Pro users probably aren't too concerned about to begin with. And I'm more than happy just to even get that smaller notch, plus of course ProMotion, which makes the biggest difference in helping this phone hold up as well as it does, at least to me. As for other modern features, we do of course have 5G networking, as well as MagSafe and wireless charging, but only the legacy lightning port rather than USB-C. The 14 Pro had lightning as well, with Apple only shifting to USB-C in 2023 due to EU regulations. The core of this phone is altogether still very familiar feeling to newer iPhones, though, and we've even of course still got that standard triple camera lens setup plus LiDAR, though photography is one of those few areas still seeing pretty big upgrades year to year, so let's take a closer look at what we have here. On the front of the 13 Pro, with that smaller notch, you've got your standard 12 megapixel selfie camera that we've seen on plenty of iPhones over the years, and really didn't get any major upgrade until 2025 with the iPhone 17 line. Not that the 13 Pro isn't plenty capable of taking solid selfies, assuming, you know, your face isn't mine, with video recording up to 4K60. This is being filmed on the iPhone 13 Pro in 4K30, and, uh, should look pretty good. On the rear we have those three 12 megapixel lenses, the 0.5x zoom ultra-wide, 1x zoom main wide lens, and then the new 3x zoom telephoto lens, upped from only 2x zoom on the 12 Pro. The camera sensors got physically larger this year, and are capable of taking in more light, so while the numbers on the surface might seem similar to the 12 Pro's capabilities, the real life photos here were actually a pretty substantial improvement, especially with lower light situations. I remember being pretty blown away by some of the photos I was taking when I first got this phone, and while not having the 48 megapixel main wide lens of the 14 Pro, that can also crop into a 2x zoom, does feel like a bit of a loss, the main 12 megapixel sensor here is still extremely capable, and can take some really nice pictures today in the right conditions. It's funny, because smartphone photography really is one of the few things still making big strides year to year, but at the same time, what we had even 4 or 5 years ago still holds up exceptionally well. The video also looks fantastic in up to 4K60, along with some ProRes options. Actually when I was reviewing the iPhone 17 Pro, I had my brother get this shot on the 13 Pro while I was at a hockey game, to show the 17 Pro's crazy zoom range in a real life situation, plus the camera control button, and despite this not exactly being an ideal scenario to get good footage, I would say the 13 Pro did a pretty decent job. Yeah, it's a bit compressed and grainy, sure, but it's also a 4 year old smartphone camera with not a whole lot of good lighting to work with. It does the job. You can see here what some of the benefits of the newer Pro iPhones entail, with the 17 Pro now having a trifecta of 48 megapixel lenses, and that camera control button, and yeah, it's all pretty great, and the quality does surpass everything the 13 Pro can do to be sure, but even in some of these photo comparisons, you know what stands out more to me than anything else? The fact that the 13 Pro is still consistently taking a solid image, and that the phone is absolutely able to capture moments and memories just as well as a newer, fancier device. While I can't blame any 13 Pro owner who might be ready for an upgrade and is excited for the newer cameras, I mean that is one of the best reasons to get the newest Pro iPhone, because there have been a lot of upgrades that have piled up over the years, I also can't blame anyone who is happy as is with their current 13 Pro, because it's got a great camera too, and it's aged really, really well in my eyes. And that right there describes the 13 Pro in a nutshell. It's aged really, really well, and I think it is hard to deny that fact. From the many photo examples I can show, even just from the one year I had with the phone, to even today, a video that it can capture being good enough for me to use in a proper review on the 17 Pro, to this phone itself and its display, its design, its hardware, the only thing holding the 13 Pro back in 2026 is its age, and the inevitable issues that arise with that. This phone has aged really, really well, but it is aging, and we'll only continue to see more and more drawbacks as time drags on. If you have an iPhone 13 Pro right now, I don't think you would need to upgrade, unless of course you want to, and or your battery is really suffering. My brother was very much ready to get my old 15 Pro Max, basically purely because of the battery life, and everything else for him has just been gravy, as he's gotten to use the better cameras, and is also just happy to now have a bigger phone in general. But not everything was to his liking, he apparently turned off the always-on display for example. I personally like having it, but it just goes to show how every user has their preferences, and not every new feature will be appreciated or necessary when you do upgrade. Realistically, while there is a ton that is new, with these newer iPhones, there may not be so much that you really feel any pressure to make the jump quite yet. While you can certainly tell the oranger device is far newer thanks to the dynamic island and slimmer bezels, the actual iOS experience here feels awfully familiar on both devices, just a bit smoother and spiffier on the 17 Pro, plus the battery life is really really strong on that phone which helps a lot. But beyond that, as well as the better cameras, the brighter display, and faster hardware, these are both pro iPhones at their core, no matter which way you toss it. And when it comes to some of these features, like the action button, Apple Intelligence, the camera control button, I don't really feel like you're missing out on much with the older device. Not to downplay the level of upgrade here, and I think if you're coming off an iPhone 13 Pro, you probably will want to buy the newest pro iPhone, assuming you still care about the photography and getting the 4X 48MP telephoto zoom lens. I'll link my review to the 17 Pro in the description. If you don't care about that, then the iPhone 17 is actually almost just as good as the 17 Pro with the exact same display, so that's like the best deal available at the moment for any iPhone. But again, it all comes down to whether or not you're feeling ready to upgrade, because for the time being, iOS 26 on the 13 Pro is still holding strong, and in terms of future updates, we can likely expect full major software support through to iOS 28, if not longer given Apple's current pattern of providing about 7 years of big updates. So that is still a couple years away, and even then, it's not as if this phone won't still be usable, and Apple does tend to provide years more of security updates to boot, plus most apps can still be downloaded and used just fine for at least a few years on previous iOS versions. If there's one thing Apple's great with when it comes to iPhone, it's been ensuring longevity. I was just talking to someone the other day who mentioned that they're still using their iPhone 5 to download and play audiobooks for their kids, and the fact that a phone that old can get you any use at all these days is remarkable, especially taking into account how even on the ancient iOS 10, it's still able to sync with your iTunes purchases and the like just fine. And hey, maybe you are on an older iPhone, and you're looking to the 13 Pro as a potential upgrade. While I would generally recommend going for something newer, and I think the 15 Pro is in a pretty good sweet spot right now for a used Pro iPhone, there's some real merit here thanks to that ProMotion display and solid battery life assuming it's healthy, which is definitely something to look out for if you do want to pick one of these up. I would try to get a phone with at least around 90% battery health, hopefully that'll get you a year or two before it really degrades significantly, or you could always just go through Apple for a replacement. Once the battery's around 80%, that's when you tend to see problems. Turning to eBay.com for an idea of the pricing, the 128GB base 13 Pro can easily be found for around $300 USD in decent condition, and you'll be adding more for extra storage or getting the max size option if preferred, which will be the best bet to ensure strong battery life. I don't think these are unreasonable prices considering just how great this phone can still be, but if you are willing to buy used, I would at least consider going up to the 15 Pro for like an extra couple hundred bucks, if only for USB-C, the newer hardware, better cameras, and a couple extra years of software updates in the long term. On the whole though, the iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max are to my evaluation almost surprisingly solid smartphones for 2026, and truly one of the best and most future-proofed Pro iPhones Apple has ever made. You might be missing some of the frills and niceties of the newer Pro models like the Dynamic Island, 48 megapixel cameras, USB-C, and so on, but at its core you've still got that ProMotion display, aging but stellar hardware, and an overall exceptionally solid experience that will remain that way with full software support for at least another couple years. The 13 Pro is still a great smartphone, assuming the battery is doing okay, which is the bane of any older smartphone, but I'd love to hear from you guys. Any of you currently using an iPhone 13 Pro, or a 13 Pro Max, or have had one in the past? What do you think of it today? Do you agree it's one of the best Pro iPhones Apple's ever made, maybe one of the best iPhones Apple's ever made? I did a video on that recently, it's only two hours long if you want to go watch it, link in the description of that. But in the meantime, please consider hitting that like button if you got this far, and maybe subscribe for more tech content. We do have a Discord server linked in the description if you'd like to join the community, come by and say hi, and just a huge shoutout to the channel members, thank you guys so much for your support. And thank you all for watching, I'm Josh from 91Tech, and I will see you all next time.