iPhone Air vs. 17 Pro/Pro Max – Which Should You Buy?

By Josh Teder

After spending well over 6 months with a Pro iPhone and now almost a month with the iPhone Air, I’ll take you through whether or not this super premium thin and light iPhone Air is the better choice for most people, or if you should likely stick with the Pro iPhones.

Weight and Design: A Return to Apple’s Roots

First, let’s talk about weight. For years, I have complained about smartphones becoming too heavy. Now, a smartphone is a device designed to be held in your hand. It doesn’t take much weight to put strain on your fingers. And over time, with advances in technology, one would think phones would have ended up weighing less and less. But the opposite has actually happened.

With larger screens and bigger batteries, most phones have ended up weighing more. The beauty of what Apple has done with the iPhone Air is they’ve gone back to their roots of making beautiful hardware that’s thin, light, and a joy to use.

Having spent the past month switching back and forth between these two, the Pro Max just feels like a brick compared to the 165-gram weight of the iPhone Air. There is no question which phone I have gravitated towards using when weight is a consideration, and it should be more of a consideration for something people are going to carry around in their hand and pocket. Heck, half the time I can’t even tell the Air is even in my pocket.

Battery Life: The Trade-Off

But yes, with lighter weight comes less battery life. Now, Apple claims the iPhone Air has all-day battery life, but that’s going to depend on the person. If you’re heavily addicted to your phone or just a frequent phone user using it for 6 to 8 hours a day, that’s not really what they meant by all-day battery life.

For me, typically my screen-on time is somewhere between 1 to 2.5 hours a day with 1 to 2 hours of background activity for music and podcasts. Now, on those days, I’m ending the day with battery life between 48 and 44%. But for days with heavier usage, I’ve seen my battery at the end of the day anywhere from 38 to 15% left.

“Half the time I can’t even tell the Air is even in my pocket.”

And yes, as someone who’s used the Pro Max iPhones for several years now, seeing the red battery indicator can be a bit unnerving, but so far, it’s actually been fine. Typically for me, I’m usually at my desk or in my car or in a situation where if I really needed to charge my iPhone Air, I could. Though, I will say one month in, I’ve run into that situation once with an app that was just draining the phone’s battery and it was getting really hot—some sort of bug—but that’s actually been pretty atypical.

And for comparison with the iPhone 17 Pro Max, I’ve been seeing its battery in the low 70% range to upper 60% range on a normal day and closer to the lower 50% to upper 40% range on a heavy day of usage, like when I’m shooting a lot of photos and videos.

Apple’s official comparison between battery life rates the Air with 27 hours of video playback versus the 17 Pro and Pro Max have 33 hours and 39 hours respectively. So yes, the iPhone Air’s battery has been quite a bit worse than my 17 Pro Max, as you would expect.

But for the days where I know I’m going to have heavier use, I can just use the MagSafe battery pack Apple made for it for a quick charge up. Why this is so brilliant is that it gives you added battery capacity when you need it, but you’re no longer forced to carry around that extra battery capacity all the time like you do with the Pro Max every single day, which when looking at my battery usage statistics, I almost never need anyway.

Charging Speeds

Now, what about charging speeds? The iPhone Air is capped at a 20-watt maximum charging speed for both wired and wireless charging and will reach approximately 50% charge in 30 minutes. Although the Pro and the Pro Max top out at 40 watts with a wired charger and can reach 50% charge in just 20 minutes. Their MagSafe charging speed tops out at 25 watts with a 30-watt or higher power adapter.

Camera Systems: The Biggest Difference

Now, the other huge difference between the iPhone Air and the 17 Pro and Pro Max is the camera systems. The iPhone Air features a single lens system with a 48-megapixel wide-angle camera, very similar to the one found in the Pro and Pro Max models. While the Pro iPhones, as they have in years past, feature a triple lens system, this year’s system is 48 megapixels across all three cameras.

However, that’s not the only difference. The Pro iPhones also support ProRAW, which is definitely a feature I do miss being able to shoot with on the iPhone Air. The Pro phones also get spatial photos, the Academy Color Encoding System, ProRes and ProRes RAW for video recording, Genlock support, macro modes, Apple Log 2, Cinematic Mode (which honestly I don’t really use anyway because it just never looks as good as using an actual camera lens), the LiDAR scanner (which can be useful for niche tasks), macro photography (this one I do actually miss), and up to 120 frames per second 4K recording for slow motion shots.

For stuff like the macro modes, maybe 120 frames per second at 4K, and especially ProRAW—being able to shoot that—that is something I do personally miss. But do I miss those features enough to want to carry around a 17 Pro Max with me over the Air? So far, no.

And that’s because maybe a year or two ago now, I just got so fed up with smartphone cameras in general with their overprocessed look, oversharpening, and image quality that often felt like it was just getting worse, I just ended up going back to dedicated cameras for events and trips where I really wanted to get good photos.

So, for me, yes, for the YouTube stuff where I’m on the go, some of the pro video modes are great to shoot with, but the Air’s default video 4K 60 frames per second is fine, and I’ve already used it in quite a bit of our footage already.

Now, thankfully, the Air did get the new 18-megapixel Center Stage selfie camera that all the other iPhones got this year, and it’s fantastic with its ability to automatically zoom in and out based on how many people are in your selfie without you having to rotate the iPhone.

Speaker Quality: A Surprising Difference

Another surprising difference between these two phones is speaker quality. There’s actually quite a big difference here. The iPhone Air lacks a speaker at the bottom and just has the one ear speaker up at the top of the phone, which honestly for casually watching videos with a volume not above maybe 70% is fine. Not great, but fine. Anything over that though and the speaker will sound distorted.

While the 17 Pro Max’s speakers sound fuller and I don’t notice distortion with them even at high volume. And in most cases, you’re likely just going to want to wear AirPods to listen to music or podcasts. Anyway, speaking of which, I did just release a video explaining why you might want to upgrade to the AirPods Pro 3.

Other Key Differences

Moving on, another difference between these phones that could matter to some is the charging port on the Air is USB 2.0 versus USB 3.0 on the Pros. This means with the Air, file transfers max out at 480 megabits per second, but on the Pro, they max out at a whopping 10 gigabits per second. This is really only going to matter for workflows where you’re moving a lot of files off your iPhone at once via a wired connection, but something to keep in mind.

Another difference I’ve noticed with these phones involves haptics. And I’ve seen some say that the haptics are better on the Pro iPhones. Now, this could be because I have specifically the Pro Max versus the Pro, but in my experience, the haptics are actually a little bit more noticeable on the Air. They just feel a little bit more intense to me. And I think maybe a reason for that is because this phone is quite a bit thinner. There’s just less material for those vibrations to travel through from the haptic motor to get to your hand or your thigh when they’re in your pocket, but it’s slight. But I’ve actually noticed them a little bit more on the Air. But if you tried both and disagree, let me know in the comments.

Performance and Thermals

Next, let’s move on to performance. Now, while both feature the same A19 Pro chip this year, their thermal performance for graphics-intensive tasks differs, and this is evident in the graphics stress tests that I conducted with both of these phones. The Air has more thermal throttling, which will matter to mobile gamers and those trying to use their phones in hot conditions like shooting a bunch of video outside. The iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max are going to be better choices for those types of activities.

Storage Options

Another difference between them is storage. If you need the most storage available on an iPhone, the 17 Pro Max has a 2TB configuration for $2,000, while the Air and the Pro top out at 1TB.

Price

Now, let’s discuss price. For the lightest phone, you’ll also end up paying a little bit less than the Pro iPhones. The iPhone Air starts at $999 with 256 gigs of storage, which is the starting storage that all of this year’s iPhones start at. And you can see the current price on Amazon and check prices across multiple retailers using the product links in the description.

My Recommendation

“Is having a bigger, heavier phone that’s more cumbersome to literally hold in your hand worth it for the times that you want the telephoto and the ultrawide camera?”

So, which phone do I think you should buy? Generally, I think most people should buy the iPhone Air. It’s sleeker looking, easier to carry around, does have all-day battery life (I think for most people), and is less expensive.

Generally, I don’t think most people will miss the extra cameras, especially the ultrawide. I bet if you scroll through your current phone’s library of photos, like 90% of the photos you’ve taken are probably from either the selfie camera or the main wide camera on the back. So, you have to ask yourself, is having a bigger, heavier phone that’s more cumbersome to literally hold in your hand worth it for the times that you want the telephoto and the ultrawide camera? For most people, I think that answer is probably going to be no.

Now, do I wish Apple could figure out a way to give us a phone like the Air, but with the triple camera system? Yes. That would be pretty amazing.

Now, if you do use the telephoto and ultrawide cameras a lot, you need a phone with better thermals for gaming and/or want better baked-in battery life that you carry around with you all of the time, a phone with better external speakers, and maybe one with a slightly larger display as in the case with the Pro Max—that’s where I think you’d still go with the Pro iPhones.

Final Thoughts

So, those are my thoughts on which iPhone I think you should buy, which one I found myself wanting to pick up most of the time. But, let me know if you’ve held the Air, what you think of it, and which phone you’re planning to buy, and why in the comments.

And make sure you’re subscribed to see both of my long-term reviews of both of these phones. And to see more of my videos on Apple products, you can do that by clicking here. And then you can click here to see more of my comparison videos like my comparison between the S25 Ultra and 17 Pro Max.

And to see all of the products I recommend at any time, you can do that by visiting 6monthslater.net/shop.

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