In my role as TechRadar’s Phones Editor, I’m lucky enough to have access to many of the best phones as they hit the market, and the iPhone 17 Pro is the latest piece of top-end smartphone hardware to come across my desk.
I’ve been using Apple’s new best iPhone for just over a month now, and I can confidently say that the hype is justified: the iPhone 17 Pro is a brilliant all-rounder with an eye-catching design, stellar camera performance, and impressive battery life, while iOS 26 is steadily maturing into the most intuitive software package Apple has ever released.
But my short time with the iPhone 17 Pro has also made me realize an uncomfortable truth: I no longer need to go Pro – and I’d urge you to ask yourself whether you do either.
As I wrote after Apple’s September launch, the standard iPhone 17 might just be the best-value iPhone ever, and our iPhone 17 review confirmed that statement to be true. So, when the time comes for me to hand this iPhone 17 Pro loan sample back and buy my own iPhone with my own, actual money, I’ll be ‘downgrading’ to the regular iPhone 17. Allow me to explain why.
Closing the gap
The headline reason is the long-awaited (and quite frankly long-overdue) display upgrade for the iPhone 17. Not only does the latest base model boast a 120Hz refresh rate, but it also gets Apple’s full-blown ProMotion display technology, which dynamically adjusts that refresh rate between 1-120Hz, depending on what’s happening on-screen. This helps to preserve the phone’s battery life and allows for an always-on display, while the full 120Hz rate delivers a much smoother scrolling experience versus the iPhone 16.
Apple also slimmed down the display bezels on the iPhone 17, which facilitates an iPhone 16-beating 6.3-inch Super Retina XDR OLED panel. Display-wise, then, the iPhone 17 is identical to the iPhone 17 Pro – and what feature do we use on our phones more than any other?
Alright, alright – that last comment was a little facetious, but let’s turn our attention to the iPhone 17’s chipset, where Apple’s base model fares similarly well.
Yes, the phone’s A19 chipset is less powerful than the iPhone 17 Pro’s A19 Pro chipset on paper, and the latter is made more efficient by the Pro-exclusive vapor chamber cooling system. But in reality, only hardcore mobile gamers and 4K video editors will notice the difference. Heck, the A19 is more powerful than last year’s A18 Pro, and we described that chipset as “a speed demon” in our iPhone 16 Pro review.
The tangible differences
I’ll concede defeat on battery life. As you can read in our recent battery life comparison, the A19 Pro chipset – coupled with the larger 4,252mAh or 5,088mAh battery in the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, respectively – nets Apple’s Pro and Pro Max phones over 15 and 17 hours of battery life, respectively, while the iPhone 17 manages between 12 and 13.
The other obvious iPhone 17 Pro benefits are its 48MP telephoto camera and support for professional video codecs like ProRes RAW. The iPhone 17 – with its Pro-equaling 48MP main and ultra-wide cameras – is an impressive everyday shooter, but it is not one of the best camera phones, while the iPhone 17 Pro absolutely is.
All this is to say that the iPhone 17 Pro feels more ‘pro’ than any iPhone before it – and I mean that in the literal sense. It’s a phone designed for power users and serious mobile photographers who frequently transfer large files (the Pro can transfer at up to 10Gbps), or who desperately need the extra battery life afforded by that more efficient chipset. I am not one of these users, and I’d wager that 90% of the iPhone-buying population aren’t, either.
Admittedly, I love taking pictures with the Pro’s telephoto lens, and I’ll be sad to see it go when I switch to the iPhone 17. But that feature alone is, for me, not worth the $300 / £300 / AU$600 premium that Apple’s new best iPhone demands.
And if that sounds like a bigger price gulf than usual, that’s because it is. A lesser-mentioned benefit of the iPhone 17 is that Apple got rid of the 128GB storage capacity for all iPhone 17 models this year, but it kept the starting price of its base model the same ($799 / £799 / AU$1,399). The starting price of the iPhone 17 Pro, meanwhile, increased by $100 / £100 / AU$200 to $1,099 / £1,099 / AU$1,999.
In other words, there’s an extra $100 / £100 / AU$200 between this year’s iPhones that didn’t exist between the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro, which makes the iPhone 17 Pro an even harder sell to casual buyers.
I’ll leave you with this roundup: in addition to its aforementioned display and two rear cameras, the iPhone 17 also gets the same 18MP selfie camera, the same customizable Action button, the same Camera Control button, the same scratch-resistant Ceramic Shield 2 display cover, and all of the same iOS 26 software features (including the new Liquid Glass interface) as the iPhone 17 Pro.
The latter phone will give you a 48MP telephoto camera, better battery life, a vapor cooling chamber, faster file transfer speeds, the ability to shoot at 4K 120 fps and in ProRes RAW, and up to 1TB of internal storage (or 2TB on the iPhone 17 Pro Max). These upgrades will cost you, at a minimum, $300 / £300 / AU$600, and, at a maximum, $700 / £700 / AU$1,400.
Are they worth that much to you? If so, go ahead and check out the roundup of the best iPhone 17 Pro deals. But if, like me, you can live without a telephoto lens and those other flagship trimmings, I’d urge you to consider the cheaper iPhone 17 this year.
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axel.metz@futurenet.com (Axel Metz)
