iPhone Air vs. 17 Pro/Pro Max - Which Should You Buy?

After spending well over 6 months with a Pro  iPhone and now almost a month with the iPhone Air,  

I'll take you through whether or not this super  premium thin and light iPhone Air is the better  

choice for most people or if you should likely  stick with the Pro iPhones. First, let's talk  

about weight. For years, I have complained about  smartphones becoming too heavy. Now, a smartphone  

is a device designed to be held in your hand.  It doesn't take much weight to put strain on  

your fingers. And over time, with advances in  technology, one would think phones would have  

ended up weighing less and less. But the opposite  has actually happened. With larger screens and  

bigger batteries, most phones have ended up  weighing more. The beauty of what Apple has done  

with the iPhone Air is they've gone back to their  roots of making beautiful hardware that's thin,  

light, and a joy to use. Having spent the past  month switching back and forth between these two,  

the Pro Max just feels like a brick compared  to the 165 gram weight of the iPhone Air. There  

is no question which phone I have gravitated  towards using when weight is a consideration,  

and it should be more of a consideration for  something people are going to carry around in  

their hand and pocket. Heck, half the time I can't  even tell the Air is even in my pocket. But yes,  

with lighter weight comes less battery life. Now,  Apple claims the iPhone Air has all day battery  

life, but that's going to depend on the person.  If you're heavily addicted to your phone or just  

a frequent phone user using it for 6 to 8 hours a  day, that's not really what they meant by all day  

battery life. For me, typically my screen on time  is somewhere between 1 to 2.5 hours a day with  

1 to two hours of background activity for music  and podcasts. Now, on those days, I'm ending the  

day with battery life between 48 and 44%. But for  days with heavier usage, I've seen my battery at  

the end of the day anywhere from 38 to 15% left.  And yes, as someone who's used the Pro Max iPhones  

for several years now, seeing the red battery  indicator can be a bit unnerving, but so far,  

it's actually been fine. Typically for me, I'm  usually at my desk or in my car or in a situation  

where if I really needed to charge my iPhone Air,  I could. Though, I will say one month in, I've run  

into that situation once with an app that was just  draining the phone's battery and it was getting  

really hot, some sort of bug, but that's actually  been pretty atypical. And for comparison with the  

iPhone 17 Pro Max, I've been seeing its battery in  the low 70% range to upper 60% range on a normal  

day and closer to the lower 50% to upper 40% range  on a heavy day of usage like when I'm shooting  

a lot of photos and videos. Apple's official  comparison between battery life rates the Air with  

27 hours of video playback versus the 17 Pro and  Pro Max have 33 hours and 39 hours respectively.  

So yes, the iPhone Air's battery has been quite a  bit worse than my 17 Pro Max as you would expect.  

But for the days where I know I'm going to have  heavier use, I can just use the MagSafe battery  

pack Apple made for it for a quick charge up. Why  this is so brilliant is that it gives you added  

battery capacity when you need it, but you're no  longer forced to carry around that extra battery  

capacity all the time like you do with the Pro Max  every single day, which when looking at my battery  

usage statistics, I almost never need anyway.  Now, what about charging speeds? The iPhone Air  

is capped at a 20 watt maximum charging speed for  both wired and wireless charging and will reach  

approximately 50% charge in 30 minutes. Although  the Pro and the Pro Max top out at 40 watts with a  

wired charger and can reach 50% charge in just  20 minutes. Their MagSafe charging speed tops  

out at 25 watts with a 30 watt or higher power  adapter. Now, the other huge difference between  

the iPhone Air and the 17 Pro and Pro Max is the  camera systems. The iPhone Air features a single  

lens system with a 48 megapixel wide-angle camera,  very similar to the one found in the Pro and Pro  

Max models. While the Pro iPhones, as they have  in years past, feature a triple lens system, this  

year's system is 48 megapixels across all three  cameras. However, that's not the only difference.  

The Pro iPhones also support ProRAW, which is  definitely a feature I do miss being able to shoot  

on with the iPhone Air. The Pro phones also get  spatial photos, the Academy Color Encoding System,  

ProRes and ProRes RAW for video recording, Genlock  support, macro modes, Apple Log 2, Cinematic Mode,  

which honestly I don't really use anyway because  it just never looks as good as using an actual  

camera lens, the LiDAR scanner, which can be  useful for niche tasks. Macro photography,  

this one I do actually miss, and up to 120 frames  per second 4K recording for slow motion shots. For  

stuff like the macro modes, maybe 120 frames per  second at 4K and especially ProRAW, being able  

to shoot that, that is something I do personally  miss. But do I miss those features enough to want  

to carry around a 17 Pro Max with me over the Air?  So far, no. And that's because maybe a year or  

two ago now, I just got so fed up with smartphone  cameras in general with their overprocessed look,  

oversharpening, and image quality that  often felt like it was just getting worse,  

I just ended up going back to dedicated cameras  for events and trips where I really wanted to  

get good photos. So, for me, yes, for the YouTube  stuff where I'm on the go, some of the pro video  

modes are great to shoot with, but the Air's  default video 4K 60 frames per second is fine,  

and I've already used it in quite a bit of our  footage already. Now, thankfully, the Air did get  

the new 18 megapixel Center Stage selfie camera  that all the other iPhones got this year, and  

it's fantastic with its ability to automatically  zoom in and out based on how many people are in  

your selfie without you having to rotate the  iPhone. Now, no matter which iPhone you get,  

you'll want to make sure that it's protected from  drops and falls. That's where Magezy comes in,  

who sponsored this video. For the iPhone 17 Pro  Max, Magezy has two excellent options, the Odyssey  

Stand M and the Odyssey Strap M. What makes  these unique is the detachable eyelet design.  

You can swap from no strap to a wrist strap with  the Odyssey Stand M, or go hands-free with the  

crossbody lanyard on the Odyssey Strap M. Both  offer 20-foot military-grade drop protection, so  

you can be assured it'll be protected from serious  drops. Plus, it has built-in MagSafe. The Odyssey  

Stand M also features a 360-degree rotating stand,  perfect for video calls and watching content. Now,  

if you're going with the ultra thin iPhone  Air and want to maintain that slim design,  

Magezy's Light M case is the perfect case. This  case is shockingly thin at just 0.7 mm. And what  

I love about it is it still feels just as  thin as when you're using the phone bare,  

which isn't always the case with other cases.  Plus, I like how it doesn't show any fingerprints.  

It's minimal yet packed with functionality from  precise independent metal buttons to built-in  

MagSafe while maintaining its thin and light  design. You can get 8% off your Magezy purchase  

by using the code Josh8 at checkout. Use the link  in the description below. And thanks to Magezy  

for sponsoring this video. Another surprising  difference between these two phones is speaker  

quality. There's actually quite a big difference  here. The iPhone Air lacks a speaker at the bottom  

and just has the one ear speaker up at the top of  the phone, which honestly for casually watching  

videos with a volume not above maybe 70% is fine.  Not great, but fine. Anything over that though and  

the speaker will sound distorted. [Music] 

Taste the [Music] body. [Music] While the 17 Pro Max's speakers  

sound fuller and I don't notice distortion with  them even at high volume. And in most cases,  

you're likely just going to want to wear AirPods  to listen to music or podcasts. Anyway, speaking  

of which, I did just release a video explaining  why you might want to upgrade to the AirPods Pro  

3, which I'll leave here and in the description.  Moving on, another difference between these  

phones that could matter to some is the charging  port on the Air is USB 2.0 versus USB 3.0 on the  

Pros. This means with the Air, file transfers max  out at 480 megabits per second, but on the Pro,  

they max out at a whopping 10 gigabits per second.  This is really only going to matter for workflows  

where you're moving a lot of files off your iPhone  at once via a wired connection, but something to  

keep in mind. Another difference I've noticed  with these phones involves haptics. And I've  

seen some say that the haptics are better on the  Pro iPhones. Now, this could be because I have  

specifically the Pro Max versus the Pro, but in  my experience, the haptics are actually a little  

bit more noticeable on the Air. They just feel a  little bit more intense to me. And I think maybe  

a reason for that is because this phone is quite a  bit thinner. There's just less material for those  

vibrations to travel through from the haptic motor  to get to your hand or your thigh when they're in  

your pocket, but it's slight. But I've actually  noticed them a little bit more on the Air. But  

if you tried both and disagree, let me know in the  comments. Next, let's move on to performance. Now,  

while both feature the same A19 Pro chip this  year, their thermal performance for graphics  

intensive tasks differs, and this is evident in  the graphics stress tests that I conducted with  

both of these phones. The Air has more thermal  throttling, which will matter to mobile gamers and  

those trying to use their phones in hot conditions  like shooting a bunch of video outside. The iPhone  

17 Pro and Pro Max are going to be better choices  for those types of activities. Another difference  

between them is storage. If you need the most  storage available on an iPhone, the 17 Pro Max  

has a 2 TB configuration for $2,000, while the Air  and the Pro top out at 1 TB. Now, let's discuss  

price. For the lightest phone, you'll also end  up paying a little bit less than the Pro iPhones.  

The iPhone Air starts at $999 with 256 gigs of  storage, which is the starting storage that all of  

this year's iPhones start at. And you can see the  current price on Amazon and check prices across  

multiple retailers using the product links in the  description. So, which phone do I think you should  

buy? Generally, I think most people should buy the  iPhone Air. It's sleeker looking, easier to carry  

around, does have all day battery life, I think  for most people, and is less expensive. Generally,  

I don't think most people will miss the extra  cameras, especially the ultrawide. I bet if  

you scroll through your current phone's library  of photos, like 90% of the photos you've taken  

are probably from either the selfie camera or the  main wide camera on the back. So, you have to ask  

yourself, is having a bigger, heavier phone that's  more cumbersome to literally hold in your hand  

worth it for the times that you want the telephoto  and the ultrawide camera? For most people, I think  

that answer is probably going to be no. Now, do  I wish Apple could figure out a way to give us  

a phone like the Air, but with the triple camera  system? Yes. That would be pretty amazing. Now,  

if you do use the telephoto and ultrawide cameras  a lot, you need a phone with better thermals for  

gaming and or want better baked-in battery life  that you carry around with you all of the time. A  

phone with better external speakers and maybe one  with a slightly larger display as in the case with  

the Pro Max. That's where I think you'd still go  with the Pro iPhones. So, those are my thoughts on  

which iPhone I think you should buy, which one I  found myself wanting to pick up most of the time.  

But, let me know if you've held the Air, what you  think of it, and which phone you're planning to  

buy, and why in the comments. And make sure you're  subscribed to see both of my long-term reviews of  

both of these phones. And to see more of my videos  on Apple products, you can do that by clicking  

here. And then you can click here to see more of  my comparison videos like my upcoming comparison  

between the S25 Ultra and 17 Pro Max. And to see  all of the products I recommend at any time, you  

can do that by visiting 6months.net/shop. For 6  Months Later, I'm Josh Teder. Thanks for watching.