iPhone 16 Pro review: I love it, but I wouldn’t buy it

The iPhone Pro is usually an easy recommendation. If you’re shopping for a new iPhone and have a bit more money to spend, splurging for the Pro is typically a no-brainer. But this year is different.

The regular iPhone 16 is the best non-Pro iPhone released in ages, and it’s so good that it makes justifying the iPhone 16 Pro more complicated than you may have thought. That’s not to say the iPhone 16 Pro is a bad phone (it’s very good!), but the group of people who should go for it over the regular model is smaller than in past years. Do you fall into that group? Let’s find out.

iPhone 16 Pro specs

Great hardware, familiar design

The iPhone 16 Pro is an incredibly well-built smartphone. Like the iPhone 15 Pro, it has a titanium frame with a matte finish. It’s lovely and considerably improved from the old stainless steel frame Apple used on its older Pro smartphones. The flat sides are easy to grip, the rounded corners are comfortable in your hand, and the overall fit and finish are second to none. It’s essentially the same hardware experience from last year’s Pro, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

The Action button returns for another year and is just as convenient as ever. I wish Apple had allowed more customization, but being able to press and hold the button to turn on the flashlight, start a voice recording, or do whatever else you want remains a great addition. This year, it’s also joined by the weird and wonderful Camera Control.

Camera Control is a new button on the right side of the iPhone 16 Pro. On the surface, it’s very straightforward. Press the button to open the camera app, press it again to take a picture, and press and hold the button to record a video. However, lightly pressing and sliding your finger across the button allows you to select and adjust numerous camera controls — including your zoom, depth of field, aperture, and more.

The whole system takes some time to get used to, but once you’ve got the hang of it, it becomes a fantastic addition to the iPhone. It’s satisfying to use, frees up the Action button to do something else, and has quickly become my favorite way to launch the camera. I also love that you can lightly customize the Camera Control, such as changing it to open Instagram instead of the regular camera app. I wish it were placed slightly lower on the frame, but otherwise, it’s excellent.

Objectively, the iPhone 16 Pro’s hardware is as good as it gets. Subjectively, I desperately wish Apple had done something to freshen up this design. The iPhone 16 Pro looks identical to the iPhone 15 Pro, which already looked a lot like the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro. In a year when the regular iPhone 16 got a (admittedly subtle) camera redesign and phenomenal new colors, the iPhone 16 Pro’s aesthetics are a bit too familiar for my taste.

An excellent (and bigger) screen

For the first time since the iPhone 12 Pro, Apple has made the display of its newest Pro iPhone bigger. Gone is the 6.1-inch screen we’ve had for the last few years, and in its place is a 6.3-inch one.

Because of this, the iPhone 16 Pro is slightly taller and wider than the iPhone 15 Pro, though not dramatically so, thanks to reduced bezels. It’s still easy to reach all four corners of the display single-handedly, and the slimmer bezels are pretty impressive.

Also impressive is the quality of this display. The OLED panel produces gorgeous colors, the 120Hz refresh rate is wonderfully smooth, and the always-on display (AOD) looks as good as ever. It’s frustrating that a 120Hz refresh rate and AOD remain limited to Apple’s Pro phones, but there’s no denying just how excellent they are. Combine all of this with 2,000 nits of peak outdoor brightness, and there’s virtually nothing to complain about with this screen.

The camera is the real reason to go Pro

Apple has always reserved its best cameras for its Pro iPhones. But more than ever before, it feels like the upgraded cameras are the reason to get the iPhone 16 Pro over the iPhone 16 this year.

In terms of specs, you get a 48-megapixel primary camera, a 48MP ultrawide camera, and a 12MP telephoto camera. The primary camera is essentially the same as last year’s, while the ultrawide camera is new. Additionally, the 5x telephoto camera is the same one used in the iPhone 15 Pro Max, which is significant since the iPhone 15 Pro was stuck with a worse 3x telephoto shooter.

As you probably suspected, the iPhone 16 Pro takes incredible photos. Shots from the primary camera are top-notch in every regard; images are detailed, colorful, and consistently great. There’s very little to complain about.

I’ve also been really happy with the new ultrawide camera. Not only do 0.5x ultrawide photos look better than ever but so do macro images. If you like taking macro shots (like I do), this is an excellent camera for that. The 5x telephoto camera is also a lovely touch. While not the longest zoom length you can get on a phone today, it’s a high-quality sensor, and it’s great getting the same 5x zoom on the 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max this year.

Like the iPhone 16, the iPhone 16 Pro also gets Apple’s new Photographic Styles. Think of them like Instagram filters, except that they individually change the tone and color of your photos rather than applying a single, generic look over the entire thing. This is how Photographic Styles have always worked, but new for the iPhone 16 family, you can change them after you’ve taken a photo and fine-tune the look and feel of each style.

As someone who has never bothered with Photographic Styles on previous iPhones, I’ve had a ton of fun playing with them on the iPhone 16 Pro. I consider myself a pretty casual photographer, but I’ve enjoyed stretching my creative muscles by toying with Photographic Styles. It’s much simpler than shooting in RAW and taking images into Photoshop, yet more professional-looking than slapping on a filter. I think it’s a fantastic middle ground that a lot of people are going to love.

That said, for the people who do want to take their mobile photography skills up a notch, that’s where the iPhone 16 Pro sets itself apart from the iPhone 16. The iPhone 16 Pro also gives you Apple ProRAW shooting, night mode portraits, 4K Dolby Vision video recording at 120fps, ProRes video recording, Log video recording, and a “studio-quality” four-mic setup.

Those are impressive features, and for someone who wants to use their iPhone as a creative tool for their YouTube channel or moviemaking, it’s easy to look at those extra camera features as legitimate reasons to buy the iPhone 16 Pro over the base model. But if you don’t care about those things, it really comes down to how badly you want the telephoto camera and the improved ultrawide sensor.

Performance, battery life, and charging

It shouldn’t be surprising that the iPhone 16 Pro is a fast smartphone. Whether you’re bouncing between different apps, playing the latest games, or spending lots of time in the camera app playing with the new Photographic Styles, the iPhone 16 Pro handles everything with ease.

This is all thanks to Apple’s new A18 Pro chip. It’s one of the most capable chips you can get in a smartphone today, and no matter what you throw at the iPhone 16 Pro, it can handle it easily.

My one performance concern lies with how hot the iPhone 16 Pro can get. One day, while bouncing back and forth between Microsoft Teams, Asana, and Arc (an excellent web browser) on a 5G connection, my iPhone 16 Pro got really hot — almost to the point where it was uncomfortable to hold. This hasn’t happened since then, and I was admittedly using my phone a lot that day, but I thought it was worth mentioning. This one gaff aside, performance on the iPhone 16 Pro has been great.

Battery life, on the other hand, has been disappointing. If I start my day at around 6:30 or 7 a.m. with a full 100% battery, I’m hitting 20% or lower by around 5 p.m. That’s with four to four and a half hours of screen time each day and using apps like Snapchat, NFL Fantasy, TikTok, and Duolingo — nothing over-the-top by any means.

This is noticeably worse than the battery life I saw with the regular iPhone 16, which gets to around 11 p.m. with over 30% battery remaining with similar usage. I’m curious to see if the iPhone 16 Pro’s battery life gets better the longer I use it, but after a couple of weeks with the phone, it’s firmly remained a device I need to top-up in the early evening. I love using the iPhone 16 Pro, and I wish I could use it longer before needing to seek out my charger.

As for charging, wired charge speeds are still up to 50% in 30 minutes, while MagSafe charging has increased to 25W when using a 30W or faster charging block. The faster MagSafe charging this year is very nice, though I desperately wish Apple would ramp up its wired charging. In a world where the OnePlus 12 can charge from 0 to 100% in half an hour, needing over an hour to fully charge the iPhone 16 Pro is a pain.

iOS 18 and Apple Intelligence

iOS 18 is available on the iPhone 16 Pro right out of the box, and with that comes some pretty significant changes. The home screen, for example, is now much more customizable — allowing you to change app icon colors and place widgets/apps anywhere you’d like. I don’t personally love how tinted app icons look (like in the picture above), but I know other people who do, and for customization fans, this is a big win.

Speaking of customization, there’s the new Control Center. There’s a lot new here. You can add/remove controls right from the Control Center (no more going to the Settings app to do this), place and resize controls with much greater flexibility, and have multiple pages in your Control Center (I have a dedicated one for smart home controls). It’s a bit finicky to get everything looking just the way you want it, but overall, I’m happy with it.

There’s a lot more in iOS 18, too. RCS support means you can finally text Android phones and get read receipts, type indicators, and high-quality photo sharing. Being able to replace lock screen controls is long overdue but a very welcome touch. The new Photos app, which takes some getting used to, has a lot of great new features and customization options.

Unfortunately, one of the main draws to iOS 18 — Apple Intelligence — is nowhere to be found on the iPhone 16 Pro. You can test the features now with the iOS 18.1 beta, but it won’t be available as a stable update until later in October. I’m curious to finally use Apple Intelligence once it’s ready. However, it’s frustrating to see Apple market the iPhone 16 Pro so heavily around its AI features when they aren’t ready yet. Apple Intelligence could be incredible, or it could be a flop. I won’t know for sure until I’ve used it, and I’ll update this review accordingly once I have.

iPhone 16 Pro price and availability

The iPhone 16 Pro is available for purchase now. It starts at $999 for 128GB of storage, with 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB models available for $1,099, $1,299, and $1,499, respectively. Natural Titanium, Black Titanium, and White Titanium — all colors available last year for the iPhone 15 Pro — return for the iPhone 16 Pro. This year’s flagship color is Desert Titanium that, to my eyes, looks a lot like gold.

With its $999 starting price, the iPhone 16 Pro is priced about the same as other competing Android smartphones — namely the Google Pixel 9 Pro. But the iPhone 16, arguably the other phone most iPhone 16 Pro shoppers will be looking at, is just $799. A $200 price difference is not insignificant, and you should really think about if the iPhone 16 Pro is worth an extra $200 for what it brings to the table.

Should you buy the iPhone 16 Pro?

The iPhone 16 Pro is a well-made, powerful, and high-quality smartphone in almost every sense. I’ve had a great time using it, but is it the iPhone you should rush out and buy? I’m not so sure.

The biggest problem with the iPhone 16 Pro is just how good the regular iPhone 16 is. It has the same Action button and Camera Control, a very similar primary camera, equally great performance, and — in my experience — better battery life. It also has the same iOS 18 software, will get the same Apple Intelligence features, and has a lighter, more comfortable, and more colorful design. It also costs $200 less.

If you need the 120Hz screen or the extra camera features, the iPhone 16 Pro has legitimate advantages over its cheaper sibling — and I think you’ll have a great time with it. But if you can live without those things, the base iPhone 16 is the way to go this year. It’s the model I ordered for myself and the iPhone I think most people should buy.