The iPhone 14 Pro Max offers the best smartphone display on the market, according to DisplayMate’s annual Display Technology Shoot-Out. Winning the “DisplayMate Award for Best Smartphone Display” with an A+ display performance grade, the iPhone 14 Pro Max replaces last year’s winner, the iPhone 13 Pro Max.
While the iPhone 14 Pro Max has essentially the same resolution as the iPhone 13 Pro Max, Apple has added a number of notable improvements. The OLED LTPO display ranges from 1Hz to 120Hz instead of 10Hz to 120Hz, allowing for a low-power always-on display option, plus more display area is available with dynamic islanding.
DisplayMate found that the iPhone 14 Pro Max is capable of a maximum brightness of 2,300 nits, more than double that of the iPhone 13 Pro Max. Apple advertises a peak brightness of 2,000 nits, so the tests exceeded even Apple’s guidelines. HDR brightness peaked at 1,590 nits, according to DisplayMate, a 33 percent improvement over the iPhone 13 Pro Max.
The iPhone 14 Pro Max received the following awards for smartphone display performance:
- Maximum white color accuracy
- Maximum absolute color accuracy
- Smallest change in color accuracy with APL
- Smallest maximum color change with APL
- Maximum image contrast accuracy and intensity scale accuracy
- Smallest change in image contrast and intensity scale with APL
- Smaller change in peak luminance with APL
- The ultimate full screen brightness for OLED smartphones
- Maximum screen brightness
- Higher contrast ratio
- The lowest screen reflectance
- Higher contrast rating in ambient light
- The smallest brightness variation with viewing angle
- The smallest color variation of white with viewing angle
- Higher visible screen resolution
The iPhone 14 Pro Max won 15 awards in total, compared to 13 won by the iPhone 13 Pro Max. DisplayMate says that Apple has focused on improving the absolute picture quality and absolute color accuracy of the OLED with a precision calibration of the factory display, which the site says is “visually indistinguishable from perfect.”
Apple’s latest flagship iPhone delivers “consistently top-tier display performance” across a suite of display tests, giving it very good to excellent scores.
Based on our extensive lab tests and measurements, the iPhone 14 Pro Max has a very impressive and excellent premium smartphone display with textbook perfect accuracy and calibration performance that visually they are indistinguishable from perfect. Based on our objective lab tests and measurements, the iPhone 14 Pro Max receives a DisplayMate Best Display Award for a smartphone that earns DisplayMate’s highest display performance grade of A+ and sets or matches 15 smartphone display performance records, including 7 visually indistinguishable from perfect ones listed above. .
DisplayMate’s full Shoot-Out goes much deeper into the high scores earned by the iPhone 14 Pro Max and what exactly makes it the best smartphone display.