iPhone 17 Pro Max: thinner, but at what cost? A charted review

Apple's headline number this year was thickness. 7.65mm, down from 8.25mm. That is the same thickness as the iPhone 13 Pro Max from 2021. Four years of cycle to get back to where we were. The question is whether the price was worth it.

What got thinner

```chart::thickness ```

The thickness chart shows the trajectory[^1]. The iPhone 13 Pro Max was the thinnest "Pro Max" form factor at 7.65mm. The 14, 15, and 16 generations got progressively thicker as Apple added camera hardware, the titanium frame, and a bigger battery. The 17 Pro Max returns to 13 Pro Max territory while keeping the larger 6.9-inch screen.

In hand it is a noticeable improvement. 19g lighter than last year. The phone disappears into a pocket again.

What got worse

```chart::battery ```

Battery life regressed. PCMark Work 3.0 at 200 nits Wi-Fi only ran 13.8 hours on the 17 Pro Max versus 15.1 hours on the 16 Pro Max. That tracks the battery capacity drop from 17.46 Wh to 16.81 Wh, a 4 percent reduction[^1]. Apple offset some of it with A19 Pro efficiency, but not all of it.

In daily use you will not notice on a normal day. On a heavy day, you will. I went from "comfortable to ignore the battery" on the 16 Pro Max to "checking it at 7pm" on the 17 Pro Max.

Performance

```table::specs ```

A19 Pro single-core hits 4180 in Geekbench 6, a 23 percent jump over the A18 Pro's 3402[^2]. That is a meaningful jump in a year, ahead of TSMC's typical 15 percent. Multi-core lands around 9650, also a good gain.

The chip handles 4K ProRes recording to external SSD without thermal throttling for over an hour, which is genuinely new. The 16 Pro Max would throttle around 25 minutes.

The camera bump

The bump grew from 4.10mm to 4.65mm[^3]. The phone now sits at a noticeable angle on a desk. Apple's case design hides this somewhat but if you go caseless it is the most prominent the bump has ever been.

The new 48MP telephoto with 8x optical-quality crop is excellent. Sample shots at 8x are usable in a way the 16 Pro Max's digitally cropped 8x was not.

Buying advice

Coming from a 14 Pro Max or older: the 17 Pro Max is a strong upgrade. The thinness, the chip, and the camera all justify the cost.

Coming from a 16 Pro Max: skip. The chip jump is real but the battery regression and the camera bump make this a sideways move at best.

The 17 Pro Max is the first iPhone in three years where Apple's stated tradeoffs (thinner, lighter, faster) were the actual tradeoffs (thinner, lighter, faster, less battery, bigger bump). That is honest. Whether it is the iPhone you want depends on what you valued before.