We compare the specs and features of iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max to help you choose the best Apple phone.
Last September, Apple announced the iPhone 11, 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max as updates to the iPhone XR , XS and XS Max, respectively. The new phones have significantly upgraded cameras, a blazing fast processor and overall better build quality. To top it all off, the iPhone 11, which starts at $699 (£729, AU$1,199), is $50 cheaper than the iPhone XR was when it was first released. And just FYI, there’s a new $399 iPhone SE for 2020.
Between the iPhone 11, 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max, it may be difficult to figure out which one you should get. All three phones have the same processor, same main, ultrawide and selfie cameras, and run iOS 13. In fact the iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max are identical in nearly every way aside from price, size, weight, battery life and screen resolution. The iPhone 11 represents one of the best values for a flagship phone you can buy today, and has many of the same 11 Pro features. On the other hand, the iPhone 11 Pro has a few key additions that make it the best iPhone ever made. At $999 (£1,049, AU$1,749), it also starts at $300 more than the iPhone 11.
For six months I used the iPhone 11 as my daily driver and the 11 Pro as my work phone. I took lots of photos and videos with the new ultrawide-angle camera, pushed the A13 processor to its max with games and photo edits and explored all of what iOS 13 has to offer.
For most people, including myself, the iPhone 11 is more than enough, and taking that one step further, I’d actually pay $50 more for the 11 to upgrade the storage from 64GB to 128GB. But here is the wrinkle: size. The iPhone 11 Pro is a bit smaller and lighter than the 11, which I personally love, and it could be the reason to go Pro. (FYI, if you want something bigger though, with the longest battery life, the iPhone 11 Pro Max is there waiting to fill your pocket and empty your bank account even more.)
The iPhone 11 is a great phone value for the price, second only to the iPhone SE 2020. Following in the footsteps of 2018’s iPhone XR, Apple smartly pitched the 11 as the iPhone for most people. Despite a lower resolution LCD screen, the iPhone 11 has the same A13 processor and relatively the same camera setup (more on that later) as the more expensive 11 Pro. It also comes in six different colors, survived CNET’s drop and water tests and earned a CNET Editors’ Choice Award. Read our Apple iPhone 11 review.
At the heart of the iPhone 11 Pro is an iPhone 11. But with upgrades such as a high-resolution OLED display, a matte-glass finish and a stainless steel side band it gets the VIP treatment. It has a third rear camera that, combined with Apple’s new Deep Fusion image processing, takes better zoomed-in photos. But probably the most-welcomed upgrade on the 11 Pro is how much longer battery life is over the previous-generation iPhone XS. In fact, the 11 Pro lasts almost as long on a single charge as the 11. Read our iPhone 11 Pro review.
iPhone 11 | iPhone 11 Pro | iPhone 11 Pro Max | |
---|---|---|---|
Display size, resolution | 6.1-inch LCD Liquid Retina; 1,792×828 pixels | 5.8-inch OLED Super Retina XDR; 2,436×1,125 pixels | 6.5-inch OLED Super Retina XDR; 2,688×1,242 pixels |
Pixel density | 326 ppi | 458 ppi | 458 ppi |
Dimensions (Inches) | 5.94×2.98×0.33 in | 5.67×2.81×0.32 in | 6.22×3.06×0.32 in |
Dimensions (Millimeters) | 150.9×75.7×8.3 mm | 144×71.4×8.1 mm | 158×77.8×8.1 mm |
Weight (Ounces, Grams) | 6.84 oz; 194g | 6.63 oz; 188g | 7.97 oz; 226g |
Mobile software | iOS 13 | iOS 13 | iOS 13 |
Camera | 12-megapixel (wide), 12-megapixel (ultra-wide) | 12-megapixel (wide), 12-megapixel (ultra-wide), 12-megapixel (telephoto) | 12-megapixel (wide), 12-megapixel (ultra-wide), 12-megapixel (telephoto) |
Front-facing camera | 12-megapixel with Face ID | 12-megapixel with Face ID | 12-megapixel with Face ID |
Video capture | 4K | 4K | 4K |
Processor | Apple A13 Bionic | Apple A13 Bionic | Apple A13 Bionic |
Storage | 64GB, 128GB, 256GB | 64GB, 256GB, 512GB | 64GB, 256GB, 512GB |
RAM | Not disclosed | Not disclosed | Not disclosed |
Expandable storage | None | None | None |
Battery | Not disclosed, but Apple claims it will last 1 hour longer than iPhone XR | Not disclosed, but Apple claims it will last 4 hours longer than iPhone XS | Not disclosed, but Apple claims it will last 5 hours longer than iPhone XS Max |
Fingerprint sensor | None (Face ID) | None (Face ID) | None (Face ID) |
Connector | Lightning | Lightning | Lightning |
Headphone jack | No | No | No |
Special features | Water resistant (IP68); dual-SIM capabilities (nano-SIM and e-SIM); wireless charging | Water resistant (IP68); dual-SIM capabilities (nano-SIM and e-SIM); wireless charging | Water resistant (IP68); dual-SIM capabilities (nano-SIM and e-SIM); wireless charging |
Price off-contract (USD) | $699 (64GB), $749 (128GB), $849 (256GB) | $999 (64GB), $1,149 (256GB), $1,349 (512GB) | $1,099 (64GB), $1,249 (256GB), $1,449 (512GB) |
Perhaps the most obvious and important reason to buy the iPhone 11 Pro over the iPhone 11 is size. They are very differently sized phones and they will fit in your hands differently.
With a 5.8-inch screen and a weight of 6.63 ounces (188 grams), the iPhone 11 Pro is the smallest of the three iPhone 11 devices. (Though, if a small phone is what you’re after, the new iPhone SE might be a better option, at 4.7 inches and 5.22 ounces.) The solid-feeling phone is the easiest to use one-handed. Weighing 6.84 ounces the iPhone 11 is heavier than the 11 Pro but doesn’t feel as dense. The iPhone 11 is 0.2 millimeters thicker than the 11 Pro, which makes it feel a tad chunky.
Everyone’s hands and needs are different. I have large hands, but prefer the svelte feeling of the 11 Pro. But if you are willing to compromise a heavier weight for a larger screen, get the 11 and save $300.
And if you want the absolute biggest screen you can have, go for the $1,099 iPhone 11 Max that has a 6.5-inch OLED screen but weighs 7.97 ounces (226 grams).
Winner: For its small size, the 11 Pro is the way to go for me.
The iPhone 11 Pro (and 11 Pro Max) has a third telephoto camera that the iPhone 11 doesn’t. At times it was nice switching to the telephoto camera. And compared to the iPhone XS, the updated telephoto camera combined with Deep Fusion processing meant I took photos with better image quality.
There were also times when I framed a shot better with the 11 Pro’s telephoto camera than I could with the main camera. For example, when I took a top-down shot of a plate of food with the main camera, I could see the phone’s shadow on the plate. But when I switched to the telephoto camera and moved the phone higher away from the table there was no shadow.
There are a couple caveats about the iPhone 11 Pro’s telephoto camera though. When you take Night Mode photos at 2x, the 11 Pro doesn’t use the telephoto camera. Instead, it takes a crop of the main wide-angle camera. Also, the telephoto camera excels in bright conditions, but when taking photos in medium-to-low light, I noticed better image quality when I took the same photo with the main camera and cropped in.
All in all, the telephoto lens is useful on the 11 Pro, but I didn’t miss having it when I used the 11. If I needed to zoom in on a photo, a 2x crop of a photo I took with the main camera worked fine. I do recommend looking at the photos you have on your current phone and see how many were taken zoomed in and how many photos would look better had you been able to zoom in a bit. If you have a lot of pictures where you wished you had a dedicated telephoto camera, then you should consider an iPhone 11 Pro.
For more on the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro cameras, check out our comparisons below:
Winner: The 11 Pro’s telephoto camera is a nice-to-have if you value iPhone photography, but it’s certainly not necessary
The iPhone 11 Pro has a 5.8-inch OLED screen, while the 11 has a 6.1-inch LCD display. When I look at the phones side-by-side, the screen on the 11 Pro looked better, brighter and showed off more details. It is a joy to watch videos and edit photos on.
The OLED screen on the 11 Pro supports HDR and has a contrast ratio (the ratio of the brightest and darkest colors on a display) of 2,000,000:1 compared to the 11’s 1,400:1. On paper that means the iPhone 11 Pro is capable of darker black levels and more color saturation. That said, side-by-side, the differences between the two screens are sometimes hard to notice. In and of itself, the colors on the iPhone 11’s LCD are accurate and videos look good.
The iPhone 11 Pro Max has a 6.5-inch OLED that has the same pixel density as the iPhone 11 Pro.
Winner: The screen on the iPhone 11 is good, but the one on the 11 Pro is even better.
We put both the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro through a test where we dropped them from different heights. After dropping them from 3-feet, 6-feet and 8-feet off the ground both phones survived without a single crack to their screens or glass backs. The only blemish was a small scuff to the iPhone 11’s aluminum band and a few damaged pixels on the bottom of the 11 Pro’s screen.
As far as water resistance, both of these phones are rated IP68. Apple claims the iPhone 11 can withstand being submerged at a depth of 6.5 feet (2 meters) up to 30 minutes and the 11 Pro can survive at a maximum depth of 13 feet (4 meters) up to 30 minutes. However, in our water tests with an underwater drone, the 11 and 11 Pro both survived being submerged for 30 minutes at 39 feet (11.9 meters).
Winner: Tie; both the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro are some of the most durable phones you can buy today,
After six months of use without a case, the backs of both the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro still didn’t have a single scratch or scuff. The textured matte glass back on the iPhone 11 Pro feels soft, smooth and durable. The phone is easy to grip and never feels like it’s going to slip out of my hand (though again, its smaller size helps with this). I’m happy to say that fingerprint smudges don’t accumulate easily.
The iPhone 11, meanwhile, has a glossy glass back, which does feel slippery in my hand and the phone is prone to smudges, too.
As far as colors, the iPhone 11 gets things more right than the 11 Pro. You can buy an iPhone 11 in six bright and fun colors. The 11 Pro is less flashy and comes in four rather serious finishes (space gray, silver, gold or midnight green). In a perfect world, I could have the matte glass finish of the 11 Pro and the color options of the 11.
The iPhones have wireless charging and support fast charging, but only the iPhone 11 Pro (and 11 Pro Max) comes with the 18-watt charger that’s required for fast charging. It’s aggravating that the 11 doesn’t come with this charger and that you’ll have to buy it separately if you want it. To make matters worse, Apple charges $29 (£29, AU$49) for the 18-watt fast charger and $19 (£19, AU$29) for the cable, when cheaper compatible alternatives are available.
Winner: On colors alone, the iPhone 11 takes this one.
Despite what it might sound like, the iPhone 11 is not the successor to the iPhone X. Find out which of the two iPhone makes more sense for your needs.
When the iPhone X was unveiled to the world in the fall of 2017, Apple CEO Tim Cook called it “the biggest leap forward since the original iPhone.” That’s partly because at the time, the iPhone X was Apple’s largest phone yet, complete with an overhauled design. Gone were the thick bezels and the physical home button of its predecessor the iPhone 7 and virtually all previous generations of iPhone. Instead we got a bar-raising phone that featured a near edge-to-edge display and for the first time we were introduced to Face ID.
The iPhone X also set a new bar in terms of price, starting at $1,000. Two years later, in 2019, the iPhone 11 was announced as follow-up to the iPhone XR. It’s not the most innovative phone ever, but it is, as Apple billed it, the iPhone for (nearly) everyone.
Compared to the iPhone X, the iPhone 11 features a better camera, improved battery life, and better durability, but it doesn’t come with nearly the same level of upgrades. In fact, Apple made some calculated compromises like using an LCD display instead of an OLED to help drive costs down, allowing the iPhone 11 to start at $699. It’s also missing a telephoto lens, which you can find on the iPhone X, the iPhone 11 Pro, and the iPhone 11 Pro Max. Even with those trade-offs, the iPhone 11 is the all-around better phone. It’s also the iPhone I prefer because of its longer battery life, better cameras and solid durability. Read our Apple iPhone 11 review.
The iPhone X was an industry leading smartphone back in 2017, and it’s still fantastic in 2020. The iPhone X has a premium OLED screen, great cameras and is powered by Apple’s robust A11 processor. But it isn’t durable, cracking at a single three-foot drop during CNET’s drop tests. It’s also much harder to come by since Apple discontinued it. You can buy refurbished phones, but it’ll set you back at least $599. Read our Apple iPhone X review.
The iPhone X is a thing of beauty that is worth appreciating based on its aesthetics alone. Its sleek, nearly all-screen appearance looks elegant and helped set new design standards for iPhones. In fact, even though it’s older than the iPhone 11, it’s arguably more modern in look and feel. That’s because it’s lighter, thinner, and smaller than the iPhone 11. (For specific numbers, you can scroll down to our specs chart below.)
It’s also crafted out of stainless steel, which is typically one of the design hallmarks of a premium phone. The iPhone 11, meanwhile, uses an aluminum frame with glass on the front and back. But for all its minimalistic beauty, the iPhone X is not a durable phone and should absolutely be used with a good case. Yes, it does have an IP67 rating, which means the phone is fully dust protected and can also withstand being submerged in 1 meter (about 3.3 feet) of water for up to 30 mins. That’s lower than the iPhone 11’s IP68 rating, but it was the drop tests that were the big letdown.
The iPhone X cracked at a single three-foot drop. The iPhone 11 withstood eight different drop tests on hard concrete, including a drop from 11 feet high (though the cameras didn’t survive). This seemed to back up Apple’s claim that it has used the most durable glass ever built into a smartphone on the front and back of the iPhone 11. The glass was custom-made for the iPhone by Corning, the American company behind Gorilla Glass.
Another key difference between the iPhone X and iPhone 11 is screen technology. The iPhone X is the clear winner in this category because it has a higher resolution display with better build quality. While the iPhone 11 dons a larger LCD display, the iPhone X features a more compact OLED display with a 2,436×1,125-pixel resolution, which is higher than the iPhone 11’s resolution (1,792×828). In general, OLED displays serve up better image quality with blacker blacks and whiter whites, but they’re also more costly. When I compared the iPhone X and iPhone 11 screens side by side, however, I didn’t notice a difference in quality, in both dark mode and normal.
Apart from price, cameras are one of the biggest and most important differentiators between the two iPhones. While both devices have dual 12-megapixel rear cameras, they differ in the type of lens built into them. Where the iPhone 11 has a wide and ultrawide camera, the iPhone X has a standard lens and a telephoto shooter, which gives the iPhone X an advantage because it’s better for zooming into a photo without losing quality. But even though the iPhone 11 lacks the much-loved telephoto lens, it has better cameras in general and it can pull off 2x digital zoom without any obvious loss of detail, though it has no optical zoom capabilities whatsoever.
In addition, the iPhone 11 also has the advantage of the more powerful A13 chipset working in its favor. This hardware combined with new image processing tech like Deep Fusion help make the iPhone 11 cameras some of the best money can buy today. Deep Fusion is a new way for the iPhone 11 to process photos allowing for better indoor shots that are sharper and more color-accurate. It also enables faster autofocus.
The iPhone 11’s ultrawide lens, which is a first in iPhones, is also a worthwhile resource to lean on when you’re photographing sweeping landscapes. It captures a 120-degree field of view allowing you to fit in more of your surroundings than previous models and injects drama into otherwise mundane scenes. It’s probably not something you’ll use day-to-day though.
As stellar as iPhone cameras are, low-light photography has long been a relative weakness. But that’s not the case in the iPhone 11. You get a new automatic Night Mode feature, which captures impressive photos in near dark conditions. The iPhone X doesn’t have the automatic Night Mode feature, so when you take low-light photos they’re grainer compared to the iPhone 11. You also get great overall image stabilization, which feels like you’re shooting video with the help of a gimbal. There’s also a much better selfie camera that can shoot 4K video.
Here are some other camera tools in the iPhone 11 that improves upon what is present on the iPhone X:
We’ve covered the differences in the exteriors of both the iPhone X and iPhone 11, but there’s a key difference internally, and that’s the aforementioned chipset. At the heart of the iPhone X is the A11 bionic chip, which was Apple’s most advanced processor at the time of its launch. Fast forward to 2020, and the A11 chipset is still a speedy processor that when combined with iOS 13.5 should still run very smoothly. The iPhone 11, meanwhile, houses the more power efficient A13 chip, which is also found on the other members of the iPhone 11 family (and the new iPhone SE). Apple claims it boosts the iPhone 11’s performance by at least 20% over the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR, which used the A12. That includes the speed of the main processor brains and its special-purpose engines for graphics and AI. When we ran processing performance speeds on 3DMark and Geekbench 5, the iPhone 11 came away with the win as expected, but the iPhone X held up well.
As usual, Apple didn’t disclose battery capacity figures, but reports point to the iPhone X carrying a smaller 2,716-mAh battery, while the iPhone 11’s equipped with a 3,110-mAh battery. In our video playback tests that loops video while on airplane mode, we found that the iPhone 11 lasted 15 hours, 24 minutes. Meanwhile, the iPhone X lasted 11 hours, 45 minutes.
As for storage, the $699 iPhone 11 model gets 64GB, which is probably fine for many people. You also have the 128GB version and 256GB versions to choose from, for $749 and $859 respectively. The iPhone X forgoes the 128GB variant, which is widely considered to be the sweet spot in terms of storage options, so you only have the remaining two to decide between.
iPhone X (2017) | iPhone 11 (2019) | |
---|---|---|
Display size, resolution | 5.8-inch; 2,436×1,125 pixels OLED | 6.1-inch LCD Liquid Retina; 1,792×828 pixels |
Pixel density | 458 ppi | 326ppi |
Dimensions (Inches) | 5.7×2.79×0.30 in | 5.94×2.98×0.33 in |
Dimensions (Millimeters) | 143.6×70.9×7.7 mm | 150.9×75.7×8.3mm |
Weight (Ounces, Grams) | 6.14 oz; 174 g | 6.84 oz; 194g |
Mobile software | iOS 11 (can update to 13) | iOS 13 |
Camera | 12-megapixel (standard), 12-megapixel (telephoto) | 12-megapixel (wide), 12-megapixel (ultra-wide) |
Front-facing camera | 7-megapixel with Face ID | 12-megapixel with Face ID |
Video capture | 4K | 4K |
Processor | Apple A11 Bionic | Apple A13 Bionic |
Storage | 64GB, 256GB | 64GB, 128GB, 256GB |
RAM | 3GB | Not disclosed |
Expandable storage | None | None |
Battery | Not disclosed | Not disclosed, but Apple claims it will last 1 hour longer than iPhone XR |
Fingerprint sensor | None (Face ID via TrueDepth camera) | None (Face ID) |
Connector | Lightning | Lightning |
Headphone jack | No | No |
Special features | Water resistant (IP67); wireless charging; Face ID 3D unlock, Animoji | Water resistant (IP68); dual-SIM capabilities (nano-SIM and e-SIM); wireless charging |
Price off-contract (USD) | $999 (64GB), $1,149 (256GB) Refurbished: $599 | $699 (64GB), $749 (128GB), $849 (256GB) |