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This here is the iPhone 18 Pro. As far as updates go, this one barely registers on the scale, but after putting it through all of our tests, we were far from disappointed. The iPhone 18 Pro could very well be the most well-balanced compact flagship of the year. Let's go through all of our test results to see what I mean. If we're talking compact flagships, the biggest competitors outside of Apple are Samsung and Google. None of these brands have made huge strides when it comes to hardware this year, but that's actually good for Apple, who are already a bit ahead of the curve, and there are a few upgrades to be found on the iPhone 18 Pro.
Apple added a new camera lens, a better chipset, and faster charging. Plus, the cutout in the display is smaller now. The design here is familiar, besides some changes in the colors. The back panel now better matches the aluminum frame. The phone is a few grams heavier now, too, but it's not really noticeable. You again get hardware keys on the phone, an Action key for shortcuts, and a dedicated camera key for launching and controlling the cameras. And there's, of course, IP68-rated protection against dust and water submersion to a depth of 6 m.
The chipset is something that sets the iPhone 18 Pro way ahead of something like the Pixel, and it's even gotten a nice upgrade. The new chip is called the Apple A20 Pro, and it's built on a 2 nm process with an improved internal design and a large heat sink. Apple claims upgraded CPU cores, a more powerful GPU, twice as many Neural Engine cores, and a 50% increase in memory bandwidth. And unlike a phone like the Pixel 11 Pro, which can struggle with certain heavy gaming titles, the iPhone 18 Pro handles games like a champ. And looking at the benchmarks, it looks like Apple did some great work here, with scores that both outclass the
competition as well as show significant gains in comparison to last year's model. Apple also advertises better thermals this year thanks to the larger vapor chamber. When we ran our CPU sustained performance test, the 18 Pro did a good job. There was some throttling, but not that much. The GPU stress test was less impressive, but it's okay by flagship standards. The phone is available with 256 or 512 gigs, or 1 or 2 TB of storage. However, the 1 and 2 TB models use a cheaper form of memory called QLC.
Independent testing shows a drop in write speeds on QLC storage when it's more than 60% full. That's just something to keep in mind when choosing your storage tier. Our iPhone 18 Pro has a 4,056 mAh battery. It's less than 2% bigger than the 3,998 mAh of last year. By the way, I'm not sure why they never just round those numbers off. Apple did manage to improve the battery life, though. The 18 Pro earned an active use score of 16 hours and 43 minutes in our tests.
Only a little better than the Pixel or the S26, but still, the difference is there. Wired charging is slightly faster this year, now rated at 45 watts. It's not as much as what we saw on the Pro Max, which measured at up to 54 watts. The charging numbers aren't blazing fast here, but they're better than before. We topped up to 74% in half an hour, and a full charge took just about an hour. There's also support for 25-watt Qi2 wireless charging, which is the same as before. The display of the 18 Pro is again a 6.3-inch OLED with a high resolution and adaptive 120 Hz
refresh rate. It's just as good as last year's, but now the cutout in the screen is smaller than ever. That's because Apple has moved the IR camera out of the cutout and fit it under the display. Since the cutout is smaller, it's less intrusive, and you can notice a bit more real estate here when you're watching something on screen. Of course, you won't find a fingerprint reader on the iPhone 18 Pro, but Face ID works as well as ever for unlocking and biometrics, despite that camera going under the screen. And the functionality of the Dynamic Island hasn't changed either.
The display's brightness overall hasn't really changed since last year. In our tests, we measured about 970 nits maximum in automatic mode and a peak brightness of over 2,700 nits. Quite good. And like before, the display features an anti-glare coating for even better sunlight legibility, something the competition still don't have. Now, for audio, the iPhone 18 Pro's stereo speakers earned a good rating on our loudness test, and there aren't many phones that sound better. The sound quality here is excellent. You can listen for yourself through our comparison tool linked below. The interface of the new iPhones is Apple's iOS 27, and it brings a few changes to the table.
Now you can fine-tune the Liquid Glass cosmetics to make the menus and bubbles as transparent or opaque as you want. iOS 27 also features extra-large widgets which can take up a whole home page. And Apple is stepping up its AI game with a revamped Siri, now called Siri AI. Siri AI can answer your questions and also make suggestions based on context from messages and emails. You might not want an AI snooping through your correspondence, but Apple promises your personal data is kept safe. Siri's voice is also really customizable in terms of both the pacing and the expression or the pitch of the voice. Been known to hold hands while sleeping. So, they don't. Otters have been known to hold hands while sleeping,
and you can access Siri straight from the camera app too, to snap something and get info about it. There are new tools for editing your photos as well. You can even rotate the angle of a photograph for a different look. Let's have a look at what's inside the box of the 18 Pro. There's the phone itself protected with a sticker. There's a USB-C to USB-C cable, a SIM tool, and some reading materials. Now, let's get into the cameras, which aren't so different from last year. That is, except for a new brighter lens on the main cam, which has a variable aperture. The main cam is
again paired with a 4x zoom and an ultrawide with autofocus. All three cameras are at 48 megapixels. The variable aperture lens is a neat trick, but it's something we've seen before from Android smartphones. One of the main benefits of this is that you can control the depth of field behind your subject. But with a sensor as small as this, you'd only really see a difference in depth of field in close-ups. Starting from the default setting being f/1.8, we didn't really see much benefit in photo sharpness or quality when the aperture was further opened or closed, regardless of lighting. Perhaps Apple was
aiming this feature more toward video creators, but in our experience, you still have to resort to using ND filters if you really insist on using specific shutter speeds in bright light. Also worth mentioning is that in the camera app, the new iPhones finally get manual control over white balance and shutter speed. It still feels a bit clunky, though, as each parameter lives within its own separate panel. Getting into the quality, the main cam's daylight photos come out great, as expected. They have very good detail, excellent dynamic range, and colors which are a bit restrained, but not lifeless. Shots of people look very good,
too, though the iPhone's trend of warmish skin tones is back again this time around. 2x digital zoom shots are also great, with well-defined detail. These come in at 12 megapixels instead of 24, though. The telephoto cam's 4x zoom results are good overall. Dynamic range and colors are great, but the detail could be a bit more crisp, something we also observed last year. At 8x zoom, the photos are a bit grainy and have some softness to them, but still they're solid considering the digital zoom added. The ultrawide photos have good-looking dynamic range and colors, and in good light, there's a good amount of detail in there. This goes down a bit indoors.
Selfies are great. They come out with plenty of detail. The native field of view is wide for capturing surrounding context, and there's autofocus here, too. Skin tones can again come out on the warmer side. At night, the main camera produces excellent shots. There's plenty of detail. Dynamic range is nice and wide. The white balance does well, and the color saturation is good, too. Night mode would only kick in with very dark scenes, but either way, the results are good. The telephoto camera doesn't do quite as well without Night mode processing coming online. And this situation is similar with the ultrawide. Without Night mode,
you can end up with softish and grainy results. You can record in up to 4K at 60 fps with all of the cameras. And the main cam can also do 120 fps. You get Dolby Vision recording capability in all modes, too, plus ProRes and Apple Log 2 options. As you'd expect from an iPhone, the 18 Pro produces high-quality videos. All three rear cameras are well matched in their output, producing clips with pleasant colors, good exposure, wide dynamic range, and great contrast. Detail is very good as well.
The main camera and the telephoto also do very well at night, with nice sharpness and detail and wide dynamic range. The internal reflections from lights are worth mentioning. It's a quirk of Apple lenses that we've seen for a while now, but hasn't really been addressed. The ultrawide cam is decent. The quality is just usable, but you don't have those reflections, at least. So, that's the iPhone 18 Pro. Compared to the previous model, it might not look like a huge upgrade. The main difference is the better chipset. We also tested a bit better battery life
and faster charging. And there's the variable aperture camera, which is a neat little trick, but I'd imagine most people would just leave the phone at its default when shooting. But leaving those updates aside, the 18 Pro is quite a well-rounded compact phone overall, with no real shortcomings. And that's something you can't really say about the other major competitors. So, if you're looking for a new compact phone, the iPhone 18 Pro should serve you quite well, and it's worth recommending. Let's have a look at some alternatives now. Google's Pixel 11 Pro is less expensive than the iPhone and packs great cameras as well. It does have slower charging,
though, and much weaker performance. Another competitor is Samsung's Galaxy S26. It's lighter and more compact, way cheaper, and its chipset performance is also flagship-grade. However, its cameras are not on the same level. Thanks for watching, guys. Here are links to our reviews of these two phones if you'd like to check those out. Let us know what you think down in the comments, and I'll see you on the next one.
