iPhone 14 Pro vs iPhone 13 Pro - Full Comparison

Vemuda Techno - The new iPhone 14 Pro is surely an exciting upgrade over the 13 Pro, but is it worth the money? Which phone should you choose to get the best deal for the buck?

I’ve spent some time with both of these phones, ran a few tests, and got a pretty mixed impression. Suddenly, answering such a simple question turned out to be rather difficult. To me, this year’s motto should be “similar yet new.”

Source: PhoneArena

The changes seem small but when you dig deeper you see that it’s a totally new phone. Every parameter you pick may not differ that much, but deep down it’s reworked. Let’s take their chassis, for example.

It seems like visually and dimensity-wise these phones are similar, but there are some subtle alterations. The body has changed slightly, both in width, height, and length.

The camera bump is slightly more “bumpy”. These changes are unnoticeable to the naked eye, but they are present. But the more significant changes can be seen in teardown – the repairability is increased, which is great.

Let’s pay attention to things you will notice. That’s where the 14 Pro pulls out the big guns. The screen, the camera, and the performance. Inside you can find a new A16 bionic chip that uses 4 nanometer technology instead of 5 nanometers on the 13 Pro’s A15.

Spec-wise these chips look the same, and Apple didn’t even compare this chip to the A15, because they knew the difference was minimal.

The geekbench scores are close, with A16 being 8 percent faster in Single-core, 14 percent in multi-core.

Your apps will not open significantly faster, but you will notice a slightly improved thermal performance. The screen dims later and the body stays cooler. Thermal tests conducted online only prove that the heat dissipation is improved. Good news for mobile gamers!

Additionally, this chip now packs an updated image-signal processor that is responsible for photo processing.

Personally, I do not think that this minuscule difference is enough to justify the upgrade, since 13 Pro is still a very, very powerful phone that will last many years.

The most obvious difference is the screen and the Dynamic Island. The screen got slightly bigger and noticeably brighter.

The iPhone 14 Pro goes up to 2000 nits of brightness instead of 1000 on the 13 Pro. This is really visible when looking at the phone in direct sunlight or powerful artificial light.

However, don’t get too excited. Overheating and lowering the brightness is still with us, so you won’t really notice that much difference after a long outdoors feed-scrolling session.

The screen has a 120 Hz refresh rate, but now it goes all the way down to 1 hz. Similar, yet new, got it?

This low refresh rate made Always on possible. But the way Apple has implemented this feature is rather bizarre.

On android you just have a clock, a date, and a couple widgets on a totally black screen. But Apple has chosen another way – a colorful and bright background.

I can’t personally decide which implementation is better, but this is something new. Yet, I already see some issues with it.

The first being the brightness. Always on in general understanding is a pretty dim thing, something unobtrusive.

Apple has decided that the display will remain bright enough to see all colors of your wallpapers. And that’s exactly the problem.

It’s far too bright, even with all adaptive brightness levels. It’s bright to the point when you start wondering whether you forgot to turn your phone off.

Maybe it’s just me, but I find it excessive and unproductive. If you don’t feel like using this feature then the 13 Pro’s screen will be perfect for you – buttery smooth animations, great contrast, and amazing color accuracy.

14 Pro is just slightly better in every way, so keep that in mind. It may seem to you that there are not many reasons to choose 13 Pro over 14 Pro and vice versa.

But that’s when we should talk about Dynamic Island. The sole feature that drives thousands of people to stores. Is this animated cutout that useful? Well, yes, but actually no. It’s a very controversial addition that has its pros and cons.

The animations are smots, everything feels futuristic and novel. It’s a completely different way of interacting with a phone's certain aspects. But it still seems more like a gimmick than something really useful.

Seeing album cover or stopwatch is cool, but reaching there to interact can be difficult, especially for people with smaller hands.

This island is a neat way of covering disadvantages in the plain sight, really. But I can’t say that for me the Dynamic Island is worthy of an upgrade, but some people just can’t have an older design. If you’re one of such people – then the 13 Pro will be perfectly fine for you.

The differences just keep piling up, more and more. 13 Pro does seem past-gen now, doesn’t it?

Then let’s move to the gray area where changes are even more controversial.

1. The cameras

First, let’s cross out the boring part of the camera upgrade – the selfie camera. It has received autofocus and advanced image-processing algorithms.

The dynamic range is still not enough for bright environments, but the level of details is better.

If you are a fan of selfies or selfie videos, the 14 Pro should be your number one choice.

But a regular person will not see a difference, so a front-facing camera can’t be a real reason to choose 14 Pro over 13 Pro.

Now to the main selling point – the triple camera system. Here, the difference between these two phones seems enormous, especially on paper. 14 Pro has 48 Mpix main camera instead of 12, updated sensor on telephoto camera, and improved ultrawide.

All that is supercharged with a photonic engine and the latest image-processing algorithms. The same goes for video – cinematic mode on 14 Pro supports 4K instead of 1080p on 13 Pro, and 14 Pro has action mode. But as soon as you really start shooting, almost all improvements slowly disappear.

Let me explain. On paper the cameras on 14 Pro are superior in every way, but in reality… not so much by default that huge 48Mpix sensor only produces 12 Mpix shots.

In daylight there is almost no difference in quality or details, as well as colors or dynamic range.

Just look at these photos, they are almost identical. Yes, the photonic engine does bring more details, but not enough to shock people on social media.

In low-light the situation is similar 14 Pro photos are brighter, have a tiny bit more detail and less noise.

The shadows are more detailed, the highlights are less apparent, and all light sources are treated slightly better.

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However, I’ve noticed a different color palette on 14 Pro. Sometimes it tends to make the sky green instead of dark blue. 13 Pro on the other hand is more consistent in low-light.

The difference in photos is a small generational leap, not big enough to be noticed while looking at it on your phone.

To see how 14 Pro is better you need a big screen, possibly even a tv. All I said is true until you turn on those 48 Mpix RAW images.

Full sensor makes a huge difference both in quality and file size. 48 Mpix images are 30 times larger than regular 12 Mpix shots.

But that Raw is something completely different. It produces much more detailed and balanced images.

Textures, shadows, highlights, everything is better. But if you are unwilling to spend hours tweaking each shot in Lightroom, you will not be able to feel the whole power of this new camera.

Raw images allow a precise tweaking of every little detail, every color, every highlight. But I have noticed quite a few difficulties when working with these RAW images.

The biggest one is transferring them. It turns out that AirDrop does compress images, and the same goes for the lightning port. Gorgeous, heavy 48 Mpix Raw files come out as an overcompressed mess.

The only way I was able to transfer them in full resolution is via uploading them as files to Google drive.

But answer this – do you really want to go through all these efforts to get slightly better images?

The zoom lens on 14 Pro is slightly better, absorbs more light with bigger pixels and better aperture than on 13 Pro.

Plus that artificial 2x zoom. 14 Pro does give more opportunities to zoom images. But if you look closely at these images you'll see that the actual difference is not night and day.

Photos are more detailed, less noisy, with better colors and dynamic range. I think that this difference is negligible.

If you really want you can edit photos on 13 Pro to look exactly like ones taken on 14 Pro, Just add some sharpness and decrease highlights. Trust me – you will not see the difference.

But what about the ultrawide lens? Here the hardware is unchanged, only the software is upgraded. The side-by-side comparison does reveal slightly better detailed and lit images on 14 Pro, but not enough to be called “2 times better.”

The ultrawide still requires a lot of work to actually be a good module. Where you really can see the difference is video. Mainly action mode and cinematic mode.

The latter on 14 Pro rocks sweet 4K resolution, while 13 Pro can shoot only in 1080p. The edge detection is improved, the overall level of detail is better.

But this mode still changes colors and tones mid-shooting which doesn’t allow for a clean and consistent-looking video. I think this is still a toy, unfit for serious shooting. The action mode is a completely different story.

13 Pro doesn’t even have anything remotely similar to that. But the level of detail is freakishly bad.

As soon as you go low-light the whole image crumbles and falls apart. I really like this mode, it is really useful for capturing well-lit dynamic moments.

If you are in the dark it would be better to shoot a regular video. Overall I consider cameras on 14 Pro better than on 13 Pro.

Such a major update definitely makes the new camera more technologically advanced and promising. However, most of the new features and options will be useful only for professionals and fans of serious photo editing.

When shooting in automatic mode without further enhancement, the footage will be of comparable quality to the previous flagship. You will have to try hard to find serious differences.

Now we’ve covered almost every real difference, so let’s move to something less dramatic yet still interesting.

2. Battery life

Apple claims that it is better on 14 Pro, but multiple tests online prove that Always-on screen drains a noticeable amount of battery.

Overall 14 Pro is slightly better in this dominion, but it all depends on your use-case scenario. But in my personal opinion, both phones are fine.

They will easily get you through the day and still have some juice left the next morning. I have always been surprised with the battery on the 13 Pro, and 14 Pro didn’t let me down.

Even with a brighter screen and more powerful processor it holds charge like a champ! The iPhone 14 Pro has a better 5G modem which gives noticeably better internet speeds.

My experience and tests online prove that new modems make a huge difference in data reception, stability, and speeds.

I am not sure whether it will work equally well in all countries, but your connection won’t get worse if you choose 14 Pro.

Ah, yes, the latest iPhones in the US don’t have a sim tray, so if you need a physical sim you should choose 13 Pro or buy 14 Pro not in the US.

I was not able to test out crash detection myself, but more adventurous people have tested it. It seems to work just fine but has a small delay.

Surely this feature will save lives, but if you don’t own a car and drive public transport, you may not feel the need to pay for this feature.

Satellite connectivity will not be available worldwide and launch only in a few countries, so if you’re not from the US or Canada, this feature will be irrelevant to you.

So, should you buy an iPhone 14 Pro or save some cash and buy 13 Pro? In my opinion, both phones are great. I think that the 13 Pro is a better deal for its price.

All those small improvements the 14 Pro has will not be as noticeable when compared to a previous generation phone. 13 Pro is great from every angle, starting with exceptional battery life, fantastic screen, and great cameras. 14 pro is just better in every way. Slightly, but better.

If you can pick up 13 Pro at discount – do that, especially if you’re not from the USA. Buy 14 Pro only if you have money to spare and you can’t stand using last year’s phone. I will definitely use the 14 Pro more and give my final verdict in future post.

Write in the comments what do you think about these phones. See you in the next one! Thanks for reading at Vemuda Techno.

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