Apple undersold the iPhone 14 Pro Max display specs
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During the iPhone 14 series keynote presentation, Apple bragged that the 6.7" display of the iPhone 14 Pro Max and the iPhone 14 Pro are the brightest panels ever put in a phone. Such claims are a dime a dozen these days, especially when it comes to the oft-abused by the marketing departments peak brightness metric.
The 2022 Pro models, however, reportedly carry Samsung's newest 12th-gen OLED technology panels that made a cameo on the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Flip 4, which indeed sport much higher brightness than their predecessors.
This is the worst scenario in terms of power draw and battery capacity consumption by that small portion of the panel. Those can go sky high while the phone hits its advertised record brightness in test setups, but it is a fairly useful metric for comparing outdoor visibility, coupled with the screen reflectance and contrast numbers.
iPhone 14 Pro Max display measurements
While we measured 1033 nits of brightness on the 14 Pro Max, that is in the typical everyday scenario where Apple advertises a 1000 nit threshold in the display specs. This goes up to 1600 peak nits when displaying HDR content, and can allegedly go up to 2000 nits when in automatic brightness mode outdoors under direct sunlight.
The peak brightness number is the absolute maximum that the panel is physically able to achieve when just a tiny fraction of it (about a percentage point) has its light-emitting diodes powered to the maximum while showing all white, and that is exactly the 2000 number that Apple advertises.
Lo and behold, independent tests have confirmed that Apple wasn't kidding when it said its iPhone 14 Pro Max and iPhone 14 Pro handsets have the brightest phone displays ever. Those measured 2307 nits of peak standard gamut brightness and 2108 nits in a wide gamut mode.
Bear in mind that this is the "brightness for a screen that has only a tiny 1% Average Picture Level in high ambient light," or the maximum a small section of the screen's diodes can reach when fully powered and displaying white under what the two ambient light sensor of the 14 Pro Max perceive as direct sunlight falling on the screen like when you try to read on the beach.
Since the iPhone 14 Pro Max also showed very low screen reflectance ratio of 4.5% as well, it can be considered one of the best phone displays for outdoor visibility in independent testing. Moreover, Apple's record peak brightness brag held water in the end.
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