The iPhone 14 Pro Max offers the best smartphone display on the market, according to DisplayMate's annual Display Technology Shoot-Out. Earning the "DisplayMate Best Smartphone Display Award" 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 LTPO OLED display ranges from 1Hz to 120Hz instead of 10Hz to 120Hz, enabling a low-power always-on display option, plus there's more available display area with the Dynamic Island.
DisplayMate found that the iPhone 14 Pro Max is able to hit a peak brightness of 2,300 nits, more than double the iPhone 13 Pro Max. Apple advertises 2,000 nits peak brightness, so the testing exceeded even Apple's guidelines. HDR brightness maxed out 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:
- Highest color accuracy of white
- Highest absolute color accuracy
- Smallest shift in color accuracy with APL
- Smallest maximum color shift with APL
- Highest image contrast accuracy and intensity scale accuracy
- Smallest shift in image contrast and intensity scale with APL
- Smallest change in peak luminance with APL
- Highest full screen brightness for OLED smartphones
- Highest peak display brightness
- Highest contrast ratio
- Lowest screen reflectance
- Highest contrast rating in ambient light
- Smallest brightness variation with viewing angle
- Smallest color variation of white with viewing angle
- Highest visible screen resolution
The iPhone 14 Pro Max won 15 awards in total, up from the 13 earned by the iPhone 13 Pro Max. DisplayMate says that Apple has concentrated on improving the absolute picture quality and absolute color accuracy of OLED with precision factory display calibration, which the site says is "visually indistinguishable from perfect."
Apple's latest flagship iPhone offers "uniformly consistent top tier display performance" across a suite of display tests, earning it very good to excellent ratings.
Based on our extensive Lab Tests and Measurements the iPhone 14 Pro Max has a Very Impressive Excellent Top Tier World Class Smartphone Display with close to Text Book Perfect Calibration Accuracy and Performance that is Visually Indistinguishable From Perfect. Based on our objective Lab Tests and Measurements the iPhone 14 Pro Max receives a DisplayMate Best Smartphone Display Award earning DisplayMate's highest ever Display Performance Grade of A+ and setting or matching 15 Smartphone Display Performance Records including 7 that are Visually Indistinguishable From Perfect that are listed above.
The full Shoot-Out from DisplayMate goes into much more depth on the high scores earned by the iPhone 14 Pro Max and what exactly makes it the best smartphone display.
