iPhone 15 Pro Max vs iPhone 13 Pro Max: Which to Buy

The iPhone 13 Pro Max is still a capable phone, and the iPhone 15 Pro Max improves on it in four specific ways: a lighter titanium frame, a brighter display, a 48MP main camera with 5x zoom, and the A17 Pro chip. Whether those are worth the gap in price is the only question that matters, and it comes down to how you use the phone rather than which numbers are larger.

Design and Build Quality

The iPhone 15 Pro Max uses a titanium band, which brings it down to 221g against the 13 Pro Max at 240g. That 19g sounds trivial on paper and is noticeable in a pocket over a day. Dimensions are close: 159.9 x 76.7 x 8.3 mm against 160.8 x 78.1 x 7.7 mm, so the 15 Pro Max is marginally narrower and marginally thicker.

Both have a Ceramic Shield front and an IP68 rating, so neither is more water resistant than the other. The real difference in handling is the finish: the 15 Pro Max has a textured matte back that holds fingerprints far less than the 13 Pro Max's glossy stainless steel edges, which show every mark. If you are buying either one second-hand iPhone 13, that matters, because the steel frame is where visible wear collects first.

Colour Options

The iPhone 15 Pro Max came in four titanium finishes: Black Titanium, White Titanium, Blue Titanium and Natural Titanium. The iPhone 13 Pro Max came in five: Graphite, Gold, Silver, Sierra Blue and Alpine Green.

The two ranges share nothing, and they read differently in the hand because the materials differ. The titanium finishes are muted and matte. The 13 Pro Max finishes are polished steel and reflect far more light, with Sierra Blue the colour most associated with that generation. Our refurbished iPhone 13 Pro Max listings show the colour of each individual unit.

Display

Both use a 6.7-inch Super Retina XDR OLED panel at 120Hz with HDR10 and Dolby Vision, so scrolling and video look the same on each. Two things separate them. The 15 Pro Max runs 1290 x 2796 against 1284 x 2778, which nobody will see, and it peaks at 2000 nits against 1200.

That brightness gap is the one real display difference and it only shows outdoors. In direct sun the 15 Pro Max stays readable where the 13 Pro Max starts to wash out. Indoors they are indistinguishable.

Cameras

This is the widest gap between the two. The 15 Pro Max has a 48MP main sensor, a 12MP ultra-wide and a 12MP periscope telephoto with 5x optical zoom, plus Action mode and spatial video recording. The 13 Pro Max has three 12MP lenses with 3x optical zoom and a LiDAR scanner.

In practice the 48MP sensor helps most in low light and when cropping, and the jump from 3x to 5x is the difference between a usable portrait reach and a genuine distance shot. Both shoot 4K at 60fps and both support ProRAW. If you do not shoot much beyond everyday photos, this gap costs you very little.

Chip and Performance

The A17 Pro pairs a 6-core CPU, two performance and four efficiency cores, with a 6-core GPU. The A15 Bionic in the 13 Pro Max has the same CPU layout with a 5-core GPU.

The A17 Pro is faster, particularly on graphics and on anything using the Neural Engine. What it is not is necessary. The A15 still runs everything in the App Store without hesitation, which is why a 13 Pro Max remains worth buying five years after launch rather than two.

Software

Both run the current version of iOS and receive the same updates. The difference is not the software version, it is what the hardware underneath can do with it: the 15 Pro Max supports features that depend on the A17 Pro and its newer camera hardware, and the 13 Pro Max does not.

Apple typically supports an iPhone with major updates for around five to six years from release. The 13 Pro Max launched in 2021, so it sits in the later part of that window, while the 15 Pro Max has several more years ahead of it. If you plan to keep the phone a long time, that gap is worth more than any single spec.

Battery

The 15 Pro Max holds 4441 mAh against 4352 mAh, which translates to around 29 hours of video playback against 28. Audio playback is 95 hours on both. Both support fast wired charging and MagSafe.

So the battery difference is marginal, and on a used phone it is outweighed by battery health. A 13 Pro Max with a replaced battery will outlast a tired 15 Pro Max, which is why the measured figure on the listing matters more than the capacity on the spec sheet.

Price

The 13 Pro Max launched at A$1,849 for the 128GB model and the 15 Pro Max at A$2,199 for 256GB. Refurbished, the gap between them is wider than the gap in what they do, which is the whole case for the older phone.

Current figures move with stock, so the live ones for the older phone sit on our iPhone 13 price breakdown.

For the newer one, the iPhone 15 price page does the same. If a unit is currently reduced it shows its old price crossed out on the card.

Which Should You Buy?

Buy the 15 Pro Max if you shoot a lot and want the 5x zoom and the 48MP sensor, if you use the phone outdoors in bright light, or if you intend to keep it for five years or more.

Buy the 13 Pro Max if you want a 120Hz Pro display and a telephoto camera for a fraction of the price, and you can live without the newest camera processing. It is the better value of the two by a wide margin, and if some units are currently reduced the iPhone 13 sale collects them.

Either way, condition matters more than the generation on a used phone. Check the measured battery health and read the cosmetic grade before the model name: our refurbished phone grading guide explains what each level looks like in the hand.

Both sit in our wider refurbished iPhones range, tested in Melbourne, sold unlocked, with up to 12 months warranty and free delivery.