The iPhone 14 Pro Max is the champ, but the Plus is a strong performer, too
You'll definitely want to know the iPhone 14 battery life if you plan on upgrading to one of Apple's new iPhones, and the results vary quite a bit depending on the model. Of course, there's lots of ways to measure endurance, but we evaluate each phone using our own test to see which handset is good enough to make our best phone battery life list.
The Tom's Guide battery test involves continuous web surfing over 5G with the screen set to 150 nits of screen brightness. We perform this test with every phone we review, including the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max.
Apple doesn't list the battery sizes for its phones, but they've been reported based on teardowns of the new phones and regulation filings. So we've included those below along with the runtime for each handset. You'll also find the battery test results for comparable smartphones to put the iPhone 14 battery life results in context.
iPhone 14 battery life results: All four models compared
iPhone 14 battery life
The regular iPhone 14 lasted a solid but unspectacular 9 hours and 28 minutes in our battery test. We consider anything above 11.5 hours great.
Apple's 6.1-inch handset has a relatively small 3,279 mAh battery, but it actually outlasted the Galaxy S22's larger 3,700 mAh battery, which turned in a runtime of 8:02.
The Google Pixel 7 endured for a poor average of 7 hours and 14 minutes, and that's with a fairly large 4,355 mAh battery. So overall the iPhone 14 wins among smaller flagship phones in terms of battery live.
iPhone 14 Plus battery life
This is where things get really interesting. Apple ditched the iPhone mini model in its lineup this year for the iPhone 14 Plus, and it turns out to be a great option for anyone looking for a big screen at a low price — and long battery life.
The iPhone 14 Plus and its 4,325 mAh battery surfed the web over 5G for an excellent 11 hours and 57 minutes. That's good enough for our best phone battery life list and significantly higher than the Galaxy S22 Plus' 10:26 result with 4,500 mAh battery. So you're getting about 1.5 hours more endurance over Samsung's comparably-sized phone.
The Pixel 7 Pro is not even close as it averaged a meager 7:54 across 5 battery tests, and that's with a 5,000 mAh battery.
iPhone 14 Pro battery life
The iPhone 14 Pro's 3,200 mAh battery took 10 hours and 13 minutes to drain, compared to 9:28 for the regular iPhone 14 and its 3,279 mAh battery.
Now, you might wonder why the iPhone 14 Pro lasted longer than the regular iPhone 14 when they have the same size display and the iPhone 14 Pro has a slightly smaller battery (likely owning to its larger camera system). And I have a couple of theories.
First, the iPhone 14 Pro has a more efficient 4nm A16 Bionic processor, while the iPhone 14 has an older A15 Bionic chip. And the iPhone 14 Pro can dynamically scale its screen refresh rate from 120Hz to 1Hz, while the iPhone 14 stays at 60Hz. Dropping down to 1Hz when the action on the screen is static can squeeze out more battery life.
iPhone 14 Pro Max battery life
The iPhone 14 Pro Max is clearly the champ when it comes to battery life. Its 4,323 mAh battery lasted for an epic 13 hours and 39 minutes on average. That beats the 10:18 runtime of the Galaxy S22 Ultra's 5,000 mAh battery by more than 3 hours.
This 6.7-inch iPhone should easily get you through a day of usage, if not more, without having to be charged. And it even outlasts the similarly sized iPhone 14 Plus by about 1.5 hours.
Bottom line
If you really care about battery life, there are two new iPhones that should be on your shortlists: the iPhone 14 Plus and iPhone 14 Pro Max. The 6.1-inch iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro both deliver good staying power, especially for their size, but the two 6.7-inch iPhones are the way to go if you want to leave the charger behind.
And it's also worth noting that the iPhone 14 Pro Max runs circles around the closest competitors from Samsung and Google when it comes to battery life.
