Is the iPhone 11 Pro Max worth buying in 2021?

Apple completely overhauled the way iPhones look with the 12 series, which now come with flat sides and an overall styling that brings memories of the iconic iPhone 4. While all of that looks good in pictures, the reality is that with this new design, the iPhone 12 Pro Max in particular has grown even bigger, to gargantuan proportions.

It has gained 0.3" inches of thickness and is both wider and taller, and even though it's not by much, the fact that it has flat sides makes the iPhone 12 Pro Max hard to even hold comfortably in the hand. It's also not very comfy in a pocket, and if you wear tighter clothing, even tying your shoes with that phone in your pocket might be mission impossible.

On the other hand, the iPhone 11 Pro Max remains within reasonable size limits and its curved sides actually make it far more comfortable to hold and carry. And if that's important to you, my personal opinion is that the iPhone 11 Pro Max has the more practical design, while the 12 Pro Max takes things to the extreme, so thta 

For a few years now, Apple holds the lead in smartphone performance, and with the iPhone 12 Pro Max we get another welcome speed improvement. However, that doesn't mean that the iPhone 11 Pro Max is slow in any perceptible way. Quite the opposite: in just daily use, we couldn't spot a difference between the two. iOS is a big part of that. It's a brilliantly optimized platform that has smooth animations and moves just as fast on the 11 Pro Max as on the 12 Pro Max.

We should note that the iPhone 12 Pro Max has 6GB of RAM vs 4GB of RAM on the 11 Pro Max, but while this is nice to have, we only noticed it on a few occasions where we had to multitask vigorously.

The camera on the iPhone 11 Pro Max is almost identical to what you get on the newer 12 Pro Max, so you really aren't missing out on much. As you can see in the image gallery above, this iPhone has great dynamic range and very pleasing, balanced colors that still look incredible even for the standards of 2021 phone photography.

If we look at a direct comparison, there are some slight differences in exposure and colors.

In the above photo, the newer iPhone captures a slightly better exposed photo that shows more detail in the shadows.

And in this next example, we see how Apple's color science has improved and we get more vibrant and lively greens and yellows, for a more pleasing image overall. Those differences, however, are hardly anything major and we had to comb through a few dozen pictures to actually find these few ones where there are some actually noticeable differences.

Finally, above you can see some low-light images captured on the iPhone 11 Pro Max. It performs great in our opinion!

Fun fact: the newer iPhone 12 Pro Max actually has a smaller battery than the iPhone 11 Pro Max! Despite the 12 Pro Max being a bigger and thicker phone, it seems that the added components required for the 5G connectivity have actually pushed Apple to include a smaller sized battery.

The actual battery size on the iPhone 11 Pro Max is 3,969mAh vs 3,687mAh on the iPhone 12 Pro Max, meaning you get a 7% smaller battery size on the 12 Pro Max.

With the newer and more power efficient chip on the iPhone 12 Pro Max, it's hard to say which of the two has the better battery life, but the iPhone 11 Pro Max is definitely out there among the very longest lasting phones we have used.

If all above have convinced you in the benefits of the 11 Pro Max, the fact that it also comes at a lower price will be a nice extra. The official MSRP for the iPhone 11 Pro Max stands at $1,000 vs $1,100 for the iPhone 12 Pro Max, a difference of $100.

While the more reasonable size, the uncompromised performance and camera are great reasons to pick the iPhone 11 Pro Max, there are a few caveats you should know about.

The newer iPhone 12 Pro Max comes with 128GB of storage in the base model versus just 64GB on the iPhone 11 Pro Max, which is... well, not a whole lot for a "Pro" phone.

The lower storage on the 11 model would be of particular concern after a few months and we sincerely recommend getting the slightly more expensive, but more future-proof 256GB iPhone 11 Pro Max model. This will bring the price up, but it will save you the trouble and embarrassment of not having enough space on your super expensive and supposedly modern phone.

Even though the iPhone 11 Pro Max has a $100 lower price, we have seen that trade-in deals for the newer iPhone 12 Pro Max are more prevalent and appear more often. If you can save a few hundred dollars with a trade-in to get the iPhone 12 Pro Max at a lower price than the older 11 Pro Max... well, it's hard to argue against that.