The iPhone Pro Max Was a No-Brainer—Apple Just Changed That

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]So, you're in the market for a new iPhone? Well, Apple just introduced the iPhone 17e, and it has a lot of the same features as the flagship iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro, but it starts at $599 rather than nearly double the price at $1099. So, let's discuss the details and get into the specs and see what you're sacrificing if you go for the cheaper iPhone.

[00:00:24]Starting with the iPhone 17e, this is a smaller, more compact phone. It is a 6.1 in screen. It's still a super retina XDR display, which is shorthand for OLED.

[00:00:35]And it can get really bright. It's very sharp. It's colorful. So, you're not really losing a ton here on the display front. You will notice that there is a single camera here, though. Now, the camera, Apple calls it a 48 megapixel camera, and you might think that's almost the same as the camera on the iPhone 17 Pro. Its main camera is also 48 megapixels. But actually, there's different sensor sizes that aren't quite easily noticeable if you look at just the specs, but there are actually kind of a few differences in the sensors. So, the sensors on the Pro version is much larger, so it can take in more light.

[00:01:07]Your images are going to be sharper and overall much better than the results from this 48 megapixel camera. Also, there's more cameras here, so you can go up to four times optical zoom with one of them, and you can do ultrawide, where you just can't really do that here. The iPhone's cameras have come a long way.

[00:01:23]But at the end of the day, between these phones, you're either choosing a single camera system or a triple camera system.

[00:01:29]So, let's put these to the test and see what you're really sacrificing by going with a single system.

[00:01:37]I have a human subject next to the camera and I'm going to be taking a standard picture with the 48 megapixel camera. And now, let's do the same shot with the iPhone 17 Pro.

[00:01:50]I just zoomed in on these pictures that I just captured and you can tell that the image from the Pro Max is significantly sharper overall. There's a little bit of a fuzzy look on the 17e image. That's because it's not the brightest scene here and it's struggling a little bit more in that lighting.

[00:02:08]Whereas you get far more detail in the shirt, the hair, the face, all around in this picture and it's overall just better exposed. And again, even if they have 48 megapixel sensors, that doesn't actually mean that the same exact camera, the Pro Max has a larger image sensor. So again, it can capture brighter images, more data, and overall you should have a sharper, clearer picture. Now, also, you are getting those two extra cameras on the back. So, what that enables is the ability to go super ultra wide, and you can get far more of the scene in the shot. Something you just can't get with the 17e.

[00:02:44]Personally, my favorite is the ability to zoom in. And the iPhone 17 Pro enables four times optical zoom. I can zoom all the way in and get a pretty decently sharp photo of something really far away, which, you know, isn't necessarily something for photographers, but even for, you know, you want to just capture your kid accepting their diploma on stage or your kid at the soccer match. Interestingly enough, this phone actually can take eight times optical like quality. So at eight times it is technically a digital zoom but you're getting a sort of a cropped sensor and so the quality should be similar to optical quality. So let's try that zoomed of the same subject. Again the setting is still relatively dark. These ultra wide and the telephoto work best in brighter light conditions, but you can still get a pretty detailed sharp shot, whether that's with the four times optical zoom or the eight times optical zoom and still have that little horse head pretty sharp. So, low light is again one area where the Pro camera will perform significantly better than the 17e. So, if we can dim the lights now, let's take the same shot again with the main camera. At the end of the day, when you look at these two results, you're still getting much clearer, nicer skin tones even on the Pro image, rather than what you get with the 17e, which is, you know, in its own right, still a good shot, but just not at the level of quality that you're getting with the Pro Max. Triple cameras are very important, but another big part of why you would want a Pro iPhone is a wealth of prograde filmmaking tools. This iPhone has features like gen lock and support for advanced film making codecs and even has pro raw capability and all of that essentially means that this can be used and has been used to capture films. For example, 28 years later by Denny Bole was shot on an iPhone. You're getting more of those advanced filmmaking capabilities and people are going to be using those features to produce better films on a smaller device. Most people don't need all of those features as the Pro Max and you can probably be just fine with the 4K 60fps capability video recording on the 17e. So for your everyday video shooting of your kids, you're traveling, all of that still should look pretty good on this phone, just not as good as the Pro Max.

[00:05:06]They both have the A19 chip except the iPhone 17 Pro has the A19 Pro. So, there's more cores for the CPU graphics performance. So, overall performance will be much better here than what you get with the A19 on this phone. However, for most people, you know, you'll be able to run all your apps, even some intensive games just fine, and that should be more than enough for vast majority of consumers. Of course, this is a bigger, bulkier phone. And Apple in this iteration has actually stuffed some of its biggest batteries on the 17 Pro.

[00:05:38]However, this battery is still pretty respectable, but naturally the bigger phone, bigger battery in this thing will mean that you're going to get much better battery life on the 17 Pro.

[00:05:47]Sometimes even close to 2 days if you're an average user, whereas this thing will probably just last about a day. Overall, there's little things that you might not really notice that actually impact the everyday use. So, for example, both of these phones have USBC ports. However, the USBC port in the iPhone 17E, it transfers data at a slower speed compared to what you can transfer with the iPhone 17 Pro. Also, this phone charges much faster than the 17e. When you look at durability, Apple uses ceramic shield 2, its ceramic and glass mixture to protect the displays on this phone. However, over on the back, Apple uses ceramic shield, an earlier version of its glass technology to protect the back, whereas this one's some other version of glass that just isn't as durable as what you get on the Pro version. One of the big new additions of the 17e compared to its predecessor, the 16e, is Mag Safe. So, Apple has had MagSafe for several years. It allows you to snap magnetic accessories on the back of the phone just like that, like a wallet, or also it allows for faster wireless charging if you use a magnetic charger. That is just such a necessary upgrade and makes this phone match its 599 price compared to not having it on the previous version because this ecosystem has so many options. You can put it on magnetic tripods, magnetic car docks, bike mounts, and all that just makes this a little more versatile.

[00:07:05]To do a stress test, we're going to run a intensive and demanding mobile game on these phones. And I have a thermal scanner here so I can check the temperature. And let's take a look at what the baseline right now is for the iPhone 17e. Currently sitting at around 89°. So, it's a little warmer right out of the gate already. So, now let's run the game and take a look what happens after running that game for several minutes. So, I'm booting up Genshin Impact on this iPhone 17E. Obviously, the more you do in the game when you're actually playing, the more it'll use up that processor.

[00:07:43]So, this game has been running for 15 minutes. So, let's do another temperature check on the 17e. Overall, it's about 95. And when you get closer to a specific hot spot, it's closer to 97, 100. Let me also just pick up the back of the phone and just also feel it is warmer. I can feel it. And you can also see one particular part of the phone is very, very hot. It's likely where the processor is. pointing it more close to that area. We're looking at 99°.

[00:08:13]That is significantly warmer than what we checked before. The baseline right now is for the iPhone 17 Pro Max around 76°.

[00:08:24]All right, let's try the same game Genchin Impact on the 17 Pro Max and let it sit for 15 minutes and see how the thermals fare over there.

[00:08:34]So, it's been about 15 minutes. This iPhone actually feels significantly cooler than the other one when I picked it up earlier. So, let's do a little temperature check. Surface here is reading about remarkably 77.

[00:08:48]We can see a little bit of more warmth towards the top of the phone. We're sitting around 79 to 83 on the back of the phone. If you compare that to the 17e, which was operating at about 95 to 100°, that's a pretty big difference.

[00:09:03]This phone is feels much cooler. So, you already are getting the benefit of just not having, you know, your fingers really sweaty by holding a really hot phone, but also that cooler performance means you can play the game for a much longer period of time and still enjoy a pretty smooth experience. Whereas on the 17e, the longer you play, the phone will get hotter, the chip will start to throttle itself a little bit, and that'll induce some stutters and maybe some lag that you'll see as you play, which will then affect the performance over time. Over on the front, you'll notice that this iPhone goes for the very old style notch design. So, the Face ID camera here is cut out like a literal notch on the phone, and it doesn't necessarily look super modern, whereas Apple has dynamic island on the iPhone 17 Pro. And that is sort of a newer technology where it just makes the entire phone look a little more sleek.

[00:09:51]But also, dynamic island adds a couple of new capabilities. So, when you have live notifications, for example, if you called an Uber and you're waiting for the Uber, you can actually tap on the dynamic island and it'll show how far your Uber is away rather than having to hop into the app. That functionality just doesn't really exist on this phone, which has the notch. Also, the screen refresh rate is a big thing that is an underrated feature. Apple has 120 Hz on the screen on the Pro models, and that actually allows for the display to refresh 120 times per second. Now, the iPhone 17e has a 60 Hz display, so that's only refreshing 60 times per second. You're only seeing 60 images per second, which means everything on the screen just feels not as smooth and fluid as it does on the Pro Max.

[00:10:37]Ultimately, what you're looking for in a smartphone greatly depends on your preferences. I know a lot of people who don't really care about the camera experience of the phone. They just want a really good baseline iPhone that can run their apps and maybe a couple of mobile games. And for those people, I would say something like the 599 iPhone 17e is a really great place to start.

[00:10:56]There are also the people on the other end of the spectrum who want all the bells and whistles. They want the design, they want the higherend materials, they want that triple camera system, maybe the larger screen. All of those capabilities will draw people to a device like the Pro Max or even the iPhone 17 Pro. And don't forget there is also the standard iPhone 17 which has a few extra capabilities over the 17e and has a little bit of a middle ground price point. I also do want to mention that if you don't care whether your phone is an Android or an iPhone, most people do, we do have another device that I think has a little bit better value. This is the Google Pixel 10A. It also recently just came out and this phone starts at $4.99 and you get many of the same capabilities as the iPhone 17e except it can go a little bit further in some ways. So, for example, it has a 120 Hz display versus the 60 Hz on the 17e. It does have a dual camera system with an ultrawide, so that adds a little more versatility, but at the end of the day, you're going to choose what ecosystem you want, whether that's Android or iPhone, and they're all still pretty good phones. So, if you're looking for a way to not break the bank and save some cash, the iPhone 17e is available now.