Apple iPhone 18 Pro Max Review: Killer Cameras, Speed And Smarts
I used the iPhone 18 Pro Max on AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon’s sub-6GHz 5G and 4G LTE networks in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Maui, Vancouver (Canada), and Stuttgart (Germany) and didn’t run into any problems with call quality or data speeds. The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max pack Apple’s latest in-house C2 5G modem (its first modem with mmWave 5G), but in the US, the iPhone 18 Pro Max ships exclusively with Qualcomm’s X80 5G modem.
iPhone 18 Pro Max Reception And Sound Quality
On the audio front, the iPhone 18 Pro Max boasts excellent-sounding stereo speakers that support Dolby Atmos content via Apple Music. Obviously, there’s no headphone jack here, but the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max support wired audio accessories over USB (digital only) and wireless audio devices via WiFi (AirPlay) and Bluetooth (AAC and SBC codecs only). Sadly, iOS 27 still lacks LDAC, LHDC, and aptX HD/lossless codec support.
iPhone 18 Pro Max Performance
The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max are powered by Apple’s flagship 2nm A20 Pro chip which features six CPU cores (two performance cores, four efficiency cores, 4.93 GHz max clock speed), seven GPU cores with Neural Accelerators and hardware-accelerated ray tracing (up to 40% faster than A19 Pro), and dual 16-core Neural Engines. It’s paired with 12GB of unified memory (in-wafer RAM), and 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB of storage.When it comes to performance, the iPhone 18 Pro Max feels super responsive and light on its feet. It ran my usual communication, entertainment, productivity, and social media apps like a champ, and also handled graphically demanding games like Death Stranding Director's Cut and Control Ultimate Edition without any trouble. None of this is really surprising since iOS 27 is highly optimized to run on Apple’s A20 Pro SoC.
Subjective performance is one thing, but the iPhone 18 Pro Max was no slouch running our usual collection of benchmarks (see below), even with sustained workloads. It managed a score of 76.3% in 3DMark’s Solar Bay Unlimited stress test, which is pretty solid. This was somewhat expected, since the surface area of the iPhone 18 Pro Max’s vapor chamber is three times larger than the iPhone 17 Pro Max’s.
iPhone 18 Pro Max Geekbench 6 Results
GeekBench is a cross-platform benchmark that simulates real-world processing workloads in image processing and particle physics calculation scenarios. We tested all of the smartphones featured here with GeekBench's single and multi-core workloads.
GeekBench 6 includes new ways of testing multi-core configurations and uses higher-resolution assets. As you can see, Apple's A20 Pro (7 GPU cores) beats Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 in both single-core and multi-core performance.
iPhone 18 Pro Max Geekbench AI 1.6 Results
Geekbench AI runs ten separate tests, eight of which fall into the domain of Computer Vision while the remaining two are Natural Language Processing benchmarks. Scores are based not only on how rapidly the machine or component can iterate on the test but also on how accurate the output is compared to a "ground truth" result obtained using full-precision processing.
In the half precision test, the iPhone 18 Pro Max crushes the competition. In the quantized test, however, the iPhone 18 Pro Max can't quite catch Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
iPhone 18 Pro Max AnTuTu 8 Results
AnTuTu’s latest benchmark returns a number of metrics ranked with somewhat nebulous scores, rather than frame rates or time to complete. Here we're running the latest version of AnTuTu across multiple Android devices. AnTuTu returns four top level performance results which are all included here: CPU, RAM, 3D, UX (or User Experience), along with a total score.
According to AnTuTu, the iPhone 18 Pro Max matches current Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5-equipped Android flagships, slotting right below the OnePlus 15 in terms of overall score.
iPhone 18 Pro Max Speedometer 3.1 Browser Benchmark Results
We use BrowserBench.org's Speedometer test to take a holistic look at web application performance. This test automatically loads and runs a variety of sample web apps using the most popular web development frameworks around, including React, Angular, Ember.js, and even simple JavaScript. This test is an example of how systems cope with real-world, modern web apps.
Apple has done a great job optimizing browser and web app performance in iOS. The iPhone 18 Pro Max takes the top spot here by a relatively wide margin. The gen-over-gen increase in performance versus the iPhone 17 Pro Max is particularly impressive.
iPhone 18 Pro Max 3DMark Benchmark Results
3DMark Wild Life is a cross-platform graphics test from UL. Its primary purpose is to measure GPU performance across platforms, and two distinct tests are available. The standard Wild Life test is designed to give feedback on how a game performs over a short period of time. With mobile games, people typically play in brief spurts when they find some free time; be it on the bus, on the subway, or a quick battle royale session over lunch break. The 3DMark stress tests, on the other hand, shows how a device performs over a longer stretch of time, and takes note of performance degradation that might crop up due to increased heat levels and throttling. In addition to Wild Life, we also ran the more taxing Solar Bay test, which incorporated ray tracing, and the light-duty Steel Nomad Lite.
3DMark stress tests are a significantly more taxing graphics benchmark that employs cutting-edge mobile game engine technologies to deliver impressive visuals -- as you can see in the screen shot above.
In these benchmarks, the iPhone 18 Pro Max makes a strong showing, with Apple's A20 Pro (7 GPU cores) slotting right below Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 and beating it in the Wild Life test.
The iPhone 18 Pro Max does exhibit some throttling in the Wild Life stress test, but still achieves a stability score of 69.7%. It also fares pretty well in the Solar Bay Stress test, managing a stability score of 76.3%, and in the Steel Nomad Light stress test, with a stability score of 75.9%.
iPhone 18 Pro Max Additional Features And Battery Life
The rest of the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max specs include sub-6GHz and mmWave 5G, 4G LTE, satellite SOS, WiFi 7 (802.11be), Bluetooth v6.0 + LE, Thread, NFC, UWB, plus dual-band A-GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, QZSS, BeiDou, and NavIC positioning. As usual, WiFi 7, Bluetooth v6.0, and Thread connectivity are handled by Apple’s N1 chip. There’s no fingerprint sensor, but Face ID works well, and Apple’s Taptic Engine delivers superb haptics.Battery life is another one of the iPhone 18 Pro Max’s strengths. While our PCMark battery test isn’t available for iOS, the iPhone 18 Pro Max’s 5567mAh cell (5391mAh on SIM tray-equipped models) easily lasted a full day on a charge, even with heavy use. In my experience, day-to-day battery life was outstanding, easily matching the endurance of Android flagships with first-generation silicon-carbon batteries, like the OnePlus 13 (6,000mAh).
The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max support 54W wired charging (PD 3.2, 0-50% in 15 minutes, 0-80% in 30 minutes) and 25W Qi2-compatible wireless charging, and include MagSafe magnets like all modern iPhones since the iPhone 12 series (iPhone SE and iPhone 16e notwithstanding). While the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max come with a braided fabric USB Type-C to Type-C cable, there’s no charger in the box.
Next up: software, AI, and my review conclusion...
