iPhone 18 Pro Review: All About that Chip
Marques Brownlee
An S Update in Disguise 0:16
The iPhone 18 Pro is basically last year's iPhone 17 Pro with a new chip, an upgraded camera, better battery life, and fresh colors to signal it's new. That kind of update used to be called an S update back in 2011. It's easy to dismiss that as boring, but after a week of use, the reviewer argues it's actually underrated, even though it's still expensive at around 1,200 dollars. For two years running, the Pro model has lived in the shadow of Apple's riskier phones, first the iPhone Air and now the folding iPhone Duo, while quietly becoming very good at what it does.
A Variable Aperture Lens 1:01
The three cameras are physically the same as last year, a 48-megapixel main, ultrawide, and 4x telephoto, but the main camera now has a variable aperture that opens up to f/1.48 and can stop down to f/1.8, f/2.8, or f/4, with third-party apps able to move through the range smoothly. In real photos the difference between wide open and stopped down is subtle, changing how much background blur or sharpness you get, similar to how subtle white balance or shutter speed shifts can be. Auto mode mostly stays at f/1.48 or f/1.8 to let in as much light as possible, which means faster shutter speeds and lower ISO noise in low light.
Why This Matters Later 4:30
Variable aperture makes a bigger difference on cameras with much larger sensors, like the one-inch-type sensors found on some other phones the reviewer has tested, where the natural depth of field can be so shallow that subjects go out of focus or autofocus struggles. If this feature sticks around until iPhones adopt bigger sensors, it could become a much bigger win, and it might even encourage other phone makers to bring back variable apertures too. Alongside the hardware, Apple's camera app now offers proper manual controls, including shutter speed, focus, and finally manual white balance, which the reviewer says matters more to the user experience than the hardware itself.
The New A20 Pro Chip 7:02
The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max run a new 2-nanometer A20 Pro chip, announced alongside the M6, and the reviewer considers it the most underrated part of the phone. Rather than showing only a power boost or only better efficiency, this chip delivers both at once, giving meaningfully longer battery life in the same size phone. Apple moved the DRAM off the CPU stack to make room for a new vapor chamber three times larger in surface area, directly cooling the CPU, which helps during heavy gaming or long 4K video recording in hot weather. The neural engine has also doubled, making on-device tasks like Siri noticeably faster than on even recent iPhones.
Battery Life and Charging 11:32
The 18 Pro now matches the battery life of last year's 17 Pro Max, delivering a day-and-a-half of use without recharging, and sometimes stretching to two days on lighter use, despite the battery itself being only about 3 percent bigger. The real gain comes from the chip's efficiency rather than battery size. Charging is also notably faster, pulling 45 watts on a 67-watt charger, supporting the claim of seven hours of video playback from five minutes of charging. The Pro Max does get a battery about 10 percent larger, estimated near 5,500 milliamp-hours, with exact European figures showing 4,056 for the Pro and 5,391 for the Pro Max.
Design, Colors, and Final Take 13:00
The phone also gets a new C2 modem for efficiency, along with new colors including a burgundy the reviewer dislikes, a light Glacier Blue, and a matte black he calls his favorite color Apple has made. The Dynamic Island shrinks slightly because the infrared Face ID sensor has moved behind the display into the top left corner, an implementation so subtle it's barely visible even up close. Overall, the reviewer sees this as a expected, unsurprising tock update following last year's bigger tick update, with the 2-nanometer chip doing most of the heavy lifting and the variable aperture camera offering future rather than immediate value.
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