iPhone 13 Pro review: focused on improving the fundamentals

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iPhone 13 Pro design, size and colors

Different colors and a bigger camera module on the Pro, which has also gotten a lot heavier

The iPhone 11 Pro and 12 Pro both weighed around 188 grams (6.63oz), while this newer iPhone 13 Pro weighs exactly 204 grams (7.2oz), and you can definitely feel the added heft if you carry it in your pocket. 

For all else, it comes with all the bells and whistles you’d expect: things like the IP68 water protection rating, and the Ceramic Shield toughened glass on the front for better protection from scratches. Still, it might be a good idea to protect that display with a screen protector.

Apple has also added one new color this year: it’s called Sierra Blue and is a very delicate shade of blue, we like it. The other iPhone 13 Pro colors are the more familiar Graphite, Silver, and Gold, and all of them feature a frosted, matte finish for the back glass.

iPhone 13 Pro: ProMotion display looks glorious

Same OLED screen with one major difference

Apple started making “Pro” versions of its phones two years ago, but it was last year, with the iPhone 12 series, when differences between the Pro and the non-Pro version almost disappeared. Well, this year, there is a lot more “Pro” to the iPhone 13 Pro than before, and one of those added features is ProMotion.

Apple explains that this is a variable refresh rate that will drop down to as low as 10Hz when you have static content such as photos, then will adjust to 30Hz or 60Hz with other content such as video, and then will ramp up all the way to 120Hz when you scroll around for example. It’s also baked into the system, it works at the full screen resolution and it works with all Apple apps.

However, the company says that developers will need to opt-in and push a little update to their apps in order to support the feature. So yes, your favorite third party app might not support ProMotion just yet, but we’d guess that it will take no longer than a couple of months until most popular apps do.

Another thing the iPhone 13 Pro can do is get brighter than last year’s model: max brightness goes as high as 1,000 nits, while it used to be 800 nits on the 12 Pro (the non-Pro iPhone 13 also goes as high as 800 nits). This makes the 13 Pro easier to use outdoors in the sun.

Performance, benchmarks and storage

The Apple A15 Bionic in the Pro series brings big GPU gains

Apple has the lead in smartphone processors and it only extends it with the Apple A15 Bionic chip in the iPhone 13 Pro. This chip is faster, but not in a way that you can immediately notice, and that’s actually been the case in the past few years of iPhone releases, which all feel similarly fast. The benefits of having a faster chip are mostly felt in some super advanced camera processing and in truly intense tasks like video editing or gaming.

The A15 is built on the same 5nm process as last year’s Apple A14 chip, so it’s no surprise that it delivers a very slight improvement in CPU performance, but what we were surprised to see was a quite big jump in GPU speeds.

Below, you can find results from a few benchmarks we ran to test the A15 performance:

Another little quirk of the iPhone 13 Pro is that it has 6GB of RAM, while the cheaper iPhone 13 model for example only has 4GB RAM. That is not really a cause of big concern for those looking to save some money on the regular model as Apple handles multitasking quite well, but it’s still one advantage of the Pro you should know about.

The iPhone 13 Pro is the RIGHT phone for gaming. Not only you get longer battery life, you also have a much more powerful GPU and to understand its power and behavior, we turn to the 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test, which runs for 20 minutes straight and shows not just the initial performance, but also whether the GPU throttles and how much exactly:

3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test benchmark results

Compared to the regular iPhone 13, the Pro model has an extra, fifth GPU core and that helps it achieve slightly higher performance, to the tune of 10% as seen above. As typical for iPhones, it starts with a burst of performance but then very quickly — after just a minute — throttles to its nominal running speeds.

On the storage side, the base version of the iPhone 13 Pro starts at 128GB storage. You can also get a 256GB, 512GB, and for the first time this year, a 1TB version. Why would you ever need 1TB of storage on your iPhone? The answer might be ProRes video, the new codec that the Pro iPhones will support, but more on that later this year when the feature becomes available.

iPhone 13 Pro cameras

All new sensors, longer zoom and faster night time capture

• Wide camera: 26mm on both, f/1.5 aperture and larger sensor 
• Ultrawide camera: 0.5X, or 13mm, f/1.8 aperture
• Telephoto camera: 3X zoom, or 77mm
• Front camera: 12MP

At night, we did not always see a dramatic difference in low light performance as you would expect. In the photo with the lights above, the iPhone 13 Pro image is a bit darker, but that’s hardly a major distinction. Also notice the very noticeable flare from those lights that appears as tiny dot reflection, that’s become worse last year and the issue still persists in the 13 series.

The ultra-wide camera on the newer phone surprisingly captures a darker image by default, but you do get slightly cleaner detail in the grass. It’s still far from the quality you can get with the main camera but it’s a step up.

Okay, let’s get to the juicy part: the new Cinematic Mode, which some will tell you is not quite ready for prime time, and others will say that it’s great. So what is it? There is really two separate aspects to it: first one is that it is just like Portrait mode for video as it blurs the background, and in that regard, it’s not perfect, but it does a far better job than the competition; the second aspect is focus racking and switching focus on a video after you’ve recorded it. The idea is that it would automatically focus on the biggest face in the frame, but when that person looks away, it will switch to the next one.

Calls and Audio Quality

There is nothing quite new in the audio department: you still don’t have a headphone jack, and you still get dual stereo speakers with one located in the earpiece and another one at the bottom. Compared to other phones, audio from iPhones has a bit more depth and bass to it (as much as that’s possible on a smartphone), but it lacks a bit of definition in the higher tonalities and the mids. It’s one of the better loudspeakers around, but not quite the very best. Let us add that it is about trade-offs here: some companies include two full-sized speakers that sound great (looking at your Asus Rog Phone 5), but that makes the device quite a bit larger and requires bigger bezels that are often frowned upon.

Calls sound crisp and clear, and we had no issues with reception, so all good on that front.

5G, Connectivity

New X60 modem, but no Wi-Fi 6e and no satellite magic

Just like the iPhone 12 series, both the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro come with 5G connectivity support with all required bands for major US carriers (and a ton of international bands). There is no difference in the connection speeds that you will witness on these two phones.

The first thing you notice here is that the iPhone 13 Pro model actually has a slightly smaller battery cell than the non-Pro version, but despite that it gets slightly longer battery life. That is mostly thanks to the variable refresh rate that can drop to as low as 10Hz and help preserve battery life. Apple rates the Pro for 20 hours of non-stop video streaming compared to 15 hours on the regular iPhone 13. Apple also tells us that on average the iPhone 13 Pro should delivers 1.5 hours longer battery life over the iPhone 12 Pro.

But how does all of that translate into real life? When I was spending more time on social media and YouTube, the iPhone 12 Pro battery would often drop below the 20% mark before the end of the day for me. It feels like the iPhone 13 Pro battery lasts significantly longer and I don’t get anxious that my battery would run out before the end of the day. Even clocking in 6 hours or 7 hours of screen time, the 13 Pro can handle that.

The battery scores that you see above are definitely impressive and confirm that the Pro gets solid battery numbers all across the board.

Charging speeds

Finally, on the charging side, there is far less excitement: you still get charging speeds of up to 20W, which feels kind of slow, plus you don’t get a charger in the box and you need to buy one separately.

iPhone 13 Pro: should you buy it?

At the end of the day, the iPhone 13 Pro was supposed to be this relatively quiet update. Another year, another iPhone. Well, it turns out that it’s more than that. We think that Apple has managed to exceed expectations, handily. Despite all the leaks that correctly predicted the new camera features and increase in weight and battery size, the actual improvement in battery life are impressive and some have gone as far as to compare them to the battery leap that Apple achieved with the M1 chip on its Macbook Air laptops earlier this year.

Should you upgrade from an iPhone 12 / Pro to this newer model? We would usually say ‘no’, but if you stumble upon a great trade-in offer and are bothered by the battery life on your device, then… go for it.

For those coming from earlier iPhones, the iPhone 13 Pro feels like the right upgrade much more so than the regular iPhone 13. The price difference of around $200 is no pocket change, but it buys you slightly longer battery life, an actual zoom camera, far better portraits, macro mode, a brighter display, more power for gaming, and smooth and luxurious 120Hz ProMotion display.

And what’s your take on the iPhone 13 Pro? Were you as surprised as we were by the battery gains and have you gotten one? Looking forward to your thoughts and experiences with the phone, you can share them right below in the comments section.