The 15 Pro Max is the new flagship of Apple’s iPhone line-up, so you’d expect it to offer a compelling camera technology – and that’s indeed the case. The 15 Pro Max’s optical reach is a 5x zoom equivalent versus the 3x zoom 15 Pro, and the phone also introduces Apple’s tetraprism periscope zoom camera, the most powerful zoom ever to grace an iPhone.
A 5x zoom is equivalent to a focal length of around 120mm in full-frame terms. While that’s a mighty reach, with just three cameras, Apple’s priciest iPhone also leaves a massive void of optical coverage between 1-5x.
Thanks to the Pro Max’s powerful primary sensor, a 1-2.5x reach up to around 60mm should still look great; but at 60-120mm, we’d expect quality to start crumbling based on the specs and our experience with other phones. That’s merely conjecture before we’ve actually used the phone, though – so what’s the 15 Pro Max actually like to live with, both as a phone and a camera?
Design
While the iPhone 15 Pro Max might look
