Apple iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max

A new CPU and the "Dynamic Island" are the big changes, but we wonder whether they're worth the price hike

- LANCE ULANOFF

PRICE 128GB iPhone 14 Pro, £916 (£1,099 inc VAT); 128GB iPhone 14 Pro Max, £999 (£1,199 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk 

While the regular iPhone 14 doesn't stray too far from last year's formula, the iPhone 14 Pro is a more ambitious release. It comes with a bunch of fresh features that make the £1,099 price seem almost reasonable - until you realise that's a £150 jump from last year and only buys you 128GB of storage. Those with big pockets and even bigger storage needs can pay £1,640 for the 1TB model. There's also a larger Pro Max variant for £100 more. Both are available in Deep Purple, Gold, Silver or Space Black.

Admittedly, when you first take the phone out of the box there's not much innovation on display. With their stainless steel frames and brushed glass backs, the two phones look identical to the old iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max. At the front, the glorious shiny screen is once more protected by Apple's Ceramic Shield. The 14 Pro is actually a hair taller than its predecessor, but it will still fit snugly into an iPhone 13 Pro case; the Max is a tiny bit shorter and narrower than the last phone. The buttons remain in their familiar places, as does the Lightning port; even on its flagship phones, Apple hasn't yet moved to USB-C.

Dynamic Island

The displays on these phones are among the best around. The iPhone 14 Pro has a sumptuous 6.1in OLED screen, while the Pro Max uses a larger 6.7in panel, with a slightly higher resolution just to keep things sharp. Both look fantastic, with DCI-P3 colour and rock-solid contrast, and they can get blazingly bright: the baseline brightness is 1,000cd/m², but they can hit 1,600cd/m² when playing HDR media, and outdoors the screen can ramp up to 2,000cd/m².