Apple iPhone 17 Pro vs. iPhone 17 Pro Max | Infinium-tech

The iPhone 17 Pros bring a relatively significant number of changes to the lineup compared to the previous generation, ushering in a new design and build, some camera improvements, and the usual chipset upgrade. Between the two sizes, the differences aren’t all that major, but they add up, so it’s worth looking into what sets the 17 Pro apart from the 17 Pro Max, and which one would be best suited to your needs.

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For starters, you can compare the complete specs sheets or directly continue with our editor’s assessment in the following video or in the text below.

Size comparison

Obviously, size is going to be the major differentiator and the first step in choosing between an iPhone 17 Pro and a Pro Max. While neither is particularly lightweight, there’s a clear pocketability advantage to going for the 17 Pro, its dimensions almost making it pass for ‘compact’. The curved-edge back allows the handset to appear smaller than it actually is.

Of course, that perception is there on the Pro Max too – it’s just that when you’re starting out with those dimensions, mind tricks can only get you so far. The Pro Max is particularly heavy too, with its 233 grams, and that prevents it from ever disappearing in your pocket. Not that the Pro’s 206-gram weight is negligible either. Naturally, things get even heavier and bulkier when you add a case, almost making the Pro Max better suited to a purse than a pocket.

The two iPhone 17 Pros are otherwise identical, offering the same three colorways and aluminum unibody with IP68-rated ingress protection.

Display comparison

The physical size is directly related to the display size on these two, but display quality doesn’t change with the diagonal. Both panels offer the same pixel density, 120Hz maximum refresh rate (with all the adaptive behavior Apple’s cooked into them), and Dolby Vision compliance.

Maximum brightness values are also the same between the two, with roughly 800nits available manually, boosting to 1000nits in bright ambient conditions in our standard testing, where we light up 75% of the screen with white. Much higher brightness is attainable for smaller lit-up patches – we got some 2700nits for a 10% window on either phone.

Obviously, the difference is in the overall area – the iPhone 17 Pro Max’s 6.9-inch display offers roughly 20% more of it than the 6.3-inch panel of the iPhone 17 Pro. That will get you slightly more items per screen in menu lists, and also larger pictures and video. If your iPhone is where a lot of your media consumption is taking place, a larger screen will naturally be a better option.

Battery life

The Pro Max will also last you a bit longer while you’re doing all that binge-watching and doomscrolling – we clocked three hours extra in the video playback as well as the web browsing test, and about two hours more in gaming. The smaller phone isn’t half bad either, of course, and will easily be good enough for most users, but more is more. Indeed, autonomy is one of the Pro Max’s classic advantages over the regular Pro.

Charging speed

This year’s iPhones charge noticeably faster than last year’s models. Our EU boxes say up to 35W on the Pro and up to 42W on the Pro Max. In practice, using a selection of high-quality adapters on both, the best we got on our 17 Pro was 70% in 30 minutes, while the Pro Max’s best result was 65%. The Pro Max was a bit quicker to reach 100%, though. That’s without having access to Apple’s new 40W/60W adapter which is still not available in Europe, but we’re not expecting miracles. So we’d say this section is a tie, but it’s still a positive generational development for the lineup that’s worth pointing out.

Speaker test

The speakers for both sizes of 17 Pro models are generally smaller than what was fitted on the previous generation, and both 17 Pros returned slightly lower results for loudness in our testing. The relation between the two is kept and the 17 Pro Max is a notch louder than the regular Pro. It also sounds bigger, a little more dramatic and dynamic, next to an otherwise excellent 17 Pro that’s simply slightly more space-constrained.

Performance

The iPhone 17 Pro and the Pro Max are powered by the new 3nm Apple A19 Pro chipset – the most capable version of the current generation, with lesser variants found in the vanilla 17 and the Air. This chipset packs a 6-core CPU (2 performance cores clocked at up to 4.26GHz and 4 efficiency cores ticking at up to 2.6GHz) and a 6-core GPU, as well as a 16-core Neural Engine for Apple Intelligence tasks. A new vapor chamber teams up with the aluminum unibody to improve cooling.

The new iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max pack 12 GB of LPDDR5X 8533 RAM, up from 8 GB LPDDR5X 7500 RAM on the outgoing Pros. The base storage is 256 GB NVMe, and you can opt for 512 GB and 1 TB on both Pro models. If you want a 2TB version, this small Pro won’t do – you need to go Pro Max.

Benchmark performance

In benchmarks, the Pro Max showed a minor advantage over the small Pro, but the differences are hardly consequential. Similarly, the larger phone showed marginally better sustained performance – again, of little practical significance.

Camera comparison

Gone are the days when the Pro Max had a different (and supposedly nicer) camera system compared to the small model – starting with the 16s, the two sizes share the same system. That’s also true on the 17s, where both the Pro and Pro Max get the new 4x zoom telephoto with a 48MP sensor. The other two rear cameras are carried over from the previous generation – both of them using 48MP sensors, only the wide camera has a 1/1.28″ one, while the ultrawide uses a smaller, 1/2.55″ unit.

Naturally, both iPhone 17 Pros have the same selfie camera, the new 18MP 20mm unit being shared across the entire latest generation of iPhones.

Image quality

With identical camera systems on the two phones, it shouldn’t be a surprise that they capture identical images. Here are a couple of scenes shot on the main cameras, at 1x.

Daylight photo samples, 1x: iPhone 17 Pro • iPhone 17 Pro Max

We observed an improvement on this generation at 2x compared to last year’s models, and that’s an improvement you can enjoy on both 17 Pros.

Daylight photo samples, 2x: iPhone 17 Pro • iPhone 17 Pro Max

When it comes to the telephoto, the improvement over the 16 Pros is debatable, but again – what you get on the 17 Pro Max, you get on the 17 Pro.

Daylight photo samples, 4x: iPhone 17 Pro • iPhone 17 Pro Max

Daylight photo samples, 8x: iPhone 17 Pro • iPhone 17 Pro Max

Stop us if you’ve heard this before, but the 17 Pro’s ultrawide camera captures the same photos as the 17 Pro Max’s ultrawide camera.

Daylight photo samples, 0.5x: iPhone 17 Pro • iPhone 17 Pro Max

The new multi-aspect selfie camera sensor can be found in both iPhone 17 Pros. Perhaps it’s that little bit more useful on the Pro Max, which might be a little more cumbersome to rotate, but we can also just be making stuff up by now.

Selfie samples: iPhone 17 Pro • iPhone 17 Pro Max

In the dark, it’s a bit more of the same, with the two phones producing the same photos.

Low-light photo samples, iPhone 17 Pro: 0.5x • 1x • 2x • 4x

Low-light photo samples, iPhone 17 Pro Max: 0.5x • 1x • 2x • 4x

Video quality

Below we have a few framegrabs from the videos taken by the two phones at each focal length so their video quality is easier to compare to one another.

The two iPhones capture identical-looking video, just like in stills. It’s some of the best video you can have from a smartphone too, and it’s great that you can have it on the smaller, and cheaper, iPhone 17 Pro.

Daylight video samples, iPhone 17 Pro: 0.5x • 1x • 2x • 4x

Daylight video samples, iPhone 17 Pro Max: 0.5x • 1x • 2x • 4x

Low-light video samples, iPhone 17 Pro: 0.5x • 1x • 2x • 4x

Low-light video samples, iPhone 17 Pro Max: 0.5x • 1x • 2x • 4x

Verdict

You probably knew it from the get-go, but it couldn’t hurt saying it – the iPhone 17 Pro is simply a smaller iPhone 17 Pro Max. Or the other way around, depending on how you look at it. There’s little difference between the two in principle, which is great – you can pick based on size and size-related considerations.

With that in mind, the 17 Pro is as close as you’ll get to a compact Pro iPhone this year, and while not really small or lightweight, it’s the next best thing and certainly much better than the Pro Max if you value pocketability. It’s wonderful that the small size doesn’t come with concessions in terms of functionality, and the savings are also most welcome.

The Pro Max, on the other hand, will get you a few small advantages in areas that benefit from larger dimensions. Obviously, screen estate is one of them, then there’s the extra battery life, and its speakers are a little better. And for some people, the 2TB storage option may also be an argument in the Pro Max’s favor.