iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max Review: Part Midlife Crisis, Part Battery King
iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max Review: Part Midlife Crisis, Part Battery King
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-iphone-17-pro-iphone-17-pro-max-review/
Publish Date: 2026-05-18 16:01:00
Source Domain: www.cnet.com
iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max
Pros
- The 17 Pro Max’s incredible battery life
- The brighter screen looks fantastic
- Center Stage camera with the ability to take landscape selfies vertically is sweet
Cons
- Wished Dual Capture had a 50/50 split
- Live Translation’s Siri voice can overlap with speakers’
- iPhone 17 Pro battery life is on par with the iPhone 16 Pro
Editor’s note: The iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max come with a major redesign. Gone is the titanium-and-glass sandwich approach of previous Apple Pro phones. In its place is an aluminum unibody that wraps around and covers most of the back. The phones come with a new high-resolution telephoto camera, a killer new selfie camera and a battery that earned the highest marks of any phone we tested for battery life. The iPhone 17 Pro won a CNET Lab Award as the fastest wireless-charging phone among the 33 phones we tested. The iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max are two of the best phones you can buy, which is why they received a CNET Editors’ Choice award. The original review follows.
From the first moment I picked up the new iPhone 17 Pro Max, I was beguiled by its bold, bright redesign. It’s a complete turnaround from the years of Apple’s subdued titanium motif. The square camera bump of previous Pro models is now a body-wide bar that Apple calls the “camera plateau.” The 17 Pro and Pro Max now come in actual colors — you won’t find one in black or space gray. This phone, especially in cosmic orange, wants you to look at it. It’s as if the iPhone 17 Pro Max is flexing its new muscular aluminum unibody and begging, “Please notice my camera plateau.” Is the iPhone having a midlife crisis?
Like a true midlife crisis, you need to look beyond the trendy clothes and whitened teeth to what’s going on underneath. And that’s where you’ll find the iPhone 17 Pro Max’s most monumental feature:…
