iPhone 17 Pro Review: Helpful Camera Upgrades In A Colorful New Design

Apple's plan for keeping its so-called "Pro" phones pro seems to be coming into focus — and increasingly, it's becoming clear that these phones are really for those who can't settle for anything less than the best, and who are willing to pay for it. Every year for the past few years, Apple has added more features to its base iPhone models to bring them closer to Pro models — while making it harder to justify spending that extra cash on an iPhone Pro. But, just like the last few years, the iPhone 17 Pro is still a meaningful upgrade over the base iPhone 17 and the new iPhone Air.

Once again, though, you probably don't need to spend that extra cash.

And once again, you certainly might want to anyway.

The iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max get cool new designs, better cameras, more powerful processors, and more. So just how much better are they than the base iPhone 17 and the all-new iPhone Air? I've been testing the iPhone 17 Pro Max to find out.

The design of the iPhone 17 Pro is different from 2024's iPhone 16 Pro in a number of meaningful ways. You won't mistake one for the other. The two most obvious changes are on the back of the device. Apple built the iPhone 17 Pro from an aluminum unibody, switching the build of the device back from titanium after only a year. I don't mind the change at all. The titanium look was nice, but I haven't noticed a difference in build quality. Of course, you can't wirelessly charge through metal, so Apple has added a Ceramic Shield 2 window on the back of the phone, which further adds to the design tweaks. The new Ceramic Shield 2 glass is also used on the front, and Apple says it makes the device less prone to scratches, though this isn't something I tested.

The other obvious change is the so-called "plateau." Gone is the square camera bump on the top corner of the iPhone, replaced by an extended bump that spans the width of the iPhone. On the iPhone Air, this Apple-named plateau is where basically everything except the battery and display can be found. That's not quite the case on the iPhone 17 Pro, but the extra space for Apple to play with has resulted in an improved telephoto camera.

Then there are the colors. As you might expect, Apple sent me an iPhone 17 Pro Max in Cosmic Orange, which is the flagship color this year. It's super cool. My wife doesn't love it, but the good news is that if you don't like it, you can instead buy the device in Deep Blue or Silver.

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As mentioned, I'm reviewing the iPhone 17 Pro Max, which is more or less the same size as last year's iPhone 16 Pro Max. That's to say, it's a little too big for me. Apple increased the size of the Pro Max model last year, and I found the new size to be slightly over the line of comfortable after using the iPhone 15 Pro Max for a year. Because of that, I ended up using the standard iPhone 16 Pro instead of the larger model, and even after spending several days with the Pro Max for this year, I still can't get used to the size and weight.

That, of course, is a matter of personal preference. Unlike the base iPhone 17 (without a Plus option), you can base your buying decision on whether you want a bigger screen or not. The iPhone 17 Pro, after all, still exists.

Everything else about the design of the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max is to be expected. There's a USB-C port on the bottom, a power button and Camera Control on the right edge, and volume buttons and an Action Button on the left edge. Many people upgrading to the iPhone 17 Pro Max will be using a Camera Control for the first time — and while I'm not going to get too deep into a year-old feature here, I will say that after really liking it in my review of last year's phones, the novelty has worn off a little, and I now really only use the button to launch the camera. I do like that there are more ways to customize how it works though, one year on.

For the first time in a long time, the display on the iPhone 17 Pro isn't a selling point. It's the same quality as the display on the iPhone 17 and iPhone Air. That's to say, it's an excellent screen. On the iPhone 17 Pro, you'll get a 6.3-inch screen, while on the iPhone 17 Pro Max, you'll find a 6.9-inch display. Regardless of the model you buy, you'll get an LTPO OLED display with a refresh rate that can vary from 1Hz to 120Hz, and with a 460 pixel-per-inch pixel-density. It has a peak brightness of 3,000 nits.

Seriously, it looks stunning. It gets nice and bright, feels incredibly smooth, and offers vivid colors with deep black levels. All 2026 iPhones also offer a new anti-glare display coating, and while the effect of the coating isn't as huge as the matte glass on the MacBook Pro, it definitely helps take the edge off of reflections. The end result is that, between a high brightness and anti-glare coating, you can see what's happening on the screen all the time, even in brighter environments, and even at wider viewing angles.

Basically, there's nothing on my wish list for the screen of the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Sure, higher brightness is always handy — and to be fair, in direct sunlight I did crank it to maximum settings at times. But for now, it's easily one of the best phone screens you can get.

The iPhone 17 Pro has Apple's best chipset ever in the form of the Apple A19 Pro. While Apple has two chips this year, the A19 and the A19 Pro, there are multiple variants of the A19 Pro — and the variant in the iPhone Air has one less GPU core than the variant in the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max. In the iPhone 17 Pro, you'll get an A19 Pro with a 6-core CPU and 6-core GPU, with "neural accelerators" for each of the GPU cores.

It's an incredibly high-performing chip. Core counts aren't the only difference between the A19 and the A19 Pro — the Pro chip is also coupled with more RAM (12GB), and the iPhone 17 Pro adds a new vapor cooling system that keeps the chip cool for better sustained performance.

In general, the phone performed excellently in benchmarks — though interestingly, not quite as well as a reference device with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 that I tested at Qualcomm's event. Still, it handily beat out the iPhone 16 Pro from last year, as well as top-performing Android phones in single-core performance, though it didn't quite beat them in multi-core performance.

Numbers aside, the iPhone 17 Pro performed excellently for all situations, including heavy mobile gaming and multitasking. To be sure, the iPhone 17 and iPhone Air handled these tasks with ease too, but while both of them started to heat up a little (especially the iPhone Air), the iPhone 17 Pro Max remained cooler for longer, which in turn keeps those frame rates high. I haven't quite bought in to the concept of AAA gaming on the iPhone — but if you have, you'll find the Pro devices to handle your gaming needs with ease.

In moving from the iPhone 16 Pro to the iPhone 17 Pro Max, I've moved to a phone with a bigger battery. The difference is noticeable, though I never really had much of a problem with the battery life on the smaller model from last year. With the iPhone 17 Pro Max, I ended most days with at least 40% remaining, if not more. If I needed to, I could probably stretch the device to two days of lighter usage.

I'm also someone who charges a lot, though. With MagSafe, charging coincides with where my phone just kind of lives when I'm not using it. I plop it on a MagSafe stand at night, and I try to keep my desk clean, so I keep my phone propped up on a MagSafe charger when I'm working. Maybe I charge too much, but phones are smart enough to handle that these days, and I upgrade every year anyway.

If you don't charge as often as me, you'll be happy to know that the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max support faster charging too — so you can top up quickly when you need to. With the smaller iPhone 17 Pro, you can reach 50% battery life in around 20 minutes, which is very impressive. With the larger iPhone 17 Pro Max, you won't quite hit 50%, but you might get to 40-45%. Again, you'll need a charger that supports the faster charging speeds. The iPhone 17 Pro Max supports 25W MagSafe charging, along with 25W Qi2.2 charging. That's not unique to the iPhone 17 Pro, though.

Cameras have always been a major focus (ha) for the Pro iPhones, and that remains true this year. The iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max retain a triple camera system, made up of a 48-megapixel main camera, 48-megapixel ultrawide camera, and 48-megapixel telephoto camera.

That doesn't mean there aren't new camera tricks, though. In fact, there are a few. For a few years now, Apple has used a sensor-crop technology to deliver so-called "optical-quality" or "lossless" zoom on the main camera. This means that it can crop to the middle of the main sensor to achieve 2x zoom without actually introducing any digital zoom. Now, the company is bringing that tech to another sensor — the telephoto camera. The telephoto camera itself is new — it's a tetraprism telephoto camera with 4x optical zoom, and when you apply a 2x sensor crop to 4x glass, you get 8x "optical quality" zoom. When you add the also-optical-quality 28mm (1.2x) and 35mm (1.5x) focal lengths, along with the macro mode on the ultrawide camera, you can now use macro, 0.5x, 1x, 1.2x, 1.5x, 2x, 4x, and 8x modes to achieve what Apple calls "eight lenses" in one phone.

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Now, using the term "lenses" is perhaps not fully appropriate. Lenses imply actual glass, and you don't have eight cameras on the iPhone 17 Pro. But the concept of increasing the level of flexibility without adding actual cameras is a neat one — and one that I appreciate. If it means Apple adds additional pipelines to apply sensor crops at other zoom levels, including those in between the cameras, I'm perfectly happy for Apple to claim the iPhone has the equivalent of more "lenses" on its devices. That's especially true if it's able to do so without adding more actual cameras — arguably, the triple camera iPhone 17 Pro is now more versatile than the quad-camera Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.

Regardless of Apple's marketing claims, the phone performed incredibly well in all situations. The versatility of the camera really made a difference here. In scenarios that were easy for the phone to handle, like well-lit environments and low levels of zoom, it captured bright, vibrant, and detailed images. But it's how it performed in more niche scenarios that made it clear there was a difference between this phone and the base iPhone 17.

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Still, even with the new telephoto camera, the Galaxy S25 Ultra seemed to capture slightly more detail in extremely zoomed-in photos. The colors did look a little more natural on the iPhone, but edges started to get a bit blurry, while the Galaxy device was able to maintain some detail. The device did perform better than the Pixel 10 Pro, however, even with the Pixel device's zoomed AI processing.

Combining the challenges of low light and zoom, the iPhone performed better than either the Galaxy or the Pixel device. Even at higher levels of zoom, like 20x, the iPhone 17 Pro captured more detail than the other devices while retaining relatively bright colors.

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There are improvements on the front of the phone as well. All 2026 iPhone models have a new 18-megapixel square sensor for the front-facing camera, and it's combined with Apple's Center Stage tech to make it highly flexible. Because it's a square sensor, rotating the phone itself to capture vertical or horizontal shots doesn't change the orientation. Instead, you can tap on a button to switch between vertical and horizontal modes, so you can hold the phone however is most comfortable to you. The device will also automatically use Center Stage to apply a tighter crop to selfies with just one or two people versus those with more — though you can manually control this if, for example, you want to get more of your background in the shot.

Apple has added support for ProRes RAW on the iPhone 17 Pro, which captures more sensor information for professional workflows. This isn't something I use or really tested, but it may enhance your particular workflow.

The iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max are excellent phones, and represent meaningful upgrades over last year's models. The camera in particular is very impressive, and if you like being able to capture great photos in a variety of situations, you'll find the iPhone 17 Pro to be an incredible companion. But it also should be incredible for the price you're paying. If you have the iPhone 16 Pro, you probably won't find the new models to offer enough of an improvement. That said, you might if you have anything older than the iPhone 14 series — and when you upgrade, you'll notice how much better it is.

The competition

You're probably not deciding between the iPhone 17 Pro and an Android phone like the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. If you are, it's really down to personal preference -– the performance, cameras, and even the screen are comparable.

When it comes to the other 2026 iPhone models, it might be slightly harder to make a decision. If you were previously buying a Pro model for its better screen, you don't have to do so anymore. If all you want is a great iPhone that performs well and captures solid photos, the base iPhone 17 is still a great buy. If you like the idea of the super-thin and super-light iPhone Air, there's absolutely no shame in buying a phone for its design — just know that the camera isn't as versatile and the battery is smaller. If you really want the best of the best, including among the best smartphone cameras, a long-lasting battery, and top-tier performance, the iPhone 17 Pro or Pro Max are absolutely worth considering

Should I buy the iPhone 17 Pro?

Yes. They're excellent phones all around.