Apple iPhone 14 plus review: The big-screen experience at a better price
30/05/2024
At last, all of this year’s iPhones have landed. The final part of the puzzle goes on sale on Friday 7 October and joins the iPhone 14 along with the iPhone 14 pro and iPhone 14 pro max in the range.
The new model is called the iPhone 14 plus and it marks the first time Apple has released a phone with a screen this big (6.7in) that doesn’t have the word pro at the end of it. So, what’s in a name? Well, quite a bit of money, actually.
The entry-level iPhone costs £849, the identically sized iPhone 14 pro comes in at £1,099, while the bigger phone, the iPhone 14 pro max, is priced at £1,199. The latter has the same size screen as the less expensive iPhone 14 plus.
It seems this year Apple has tried to please customers who really want the big-screen experience but don’t want to pay top dollar. The iPhone 14 plus squeaks into the middle of these iPhones, costing £949. All these prices are for the versions with 128GB storage.
So, which iPhone should you buy?
How we tested
The new iPhone 14 plus has a big screen, so we watched video and played games to see how good they looked. We checked the screen brightness indoors and outside. The setup was explored to see if it was as simple as promised. Because the phone is so big, trying it in the hand was important, and we checked if it felt too big or too heavy the longer we used it.
A high-end phone is expected to be fast, so we checked how quickly apps opened as well as how responsive the camera was (making sure there was no shutter lag, for instance) and took photos and video in different lighting conditions. Lastly, we checked if Apple’s claim of the longest battery life on any iPhone was true.
