iPhone 14 Plus Review – The Perfect Middle Ground Between Base and Pro

It’s the next numbered iteration of the ever popular iPhone, with the iPhone 14 Plus gracing our palms. It’s a bigger version of the regular iPhone 14, but is NOT the Pro series and as such, is essentially a step up from the base 14 without having certain features of the Pro versions. This bad boy will become available in Malaysia from 7 October, starting from RM4699 for the 128GB configuration, 256GB goes at RM5199 and 516GB at RM6199.

iSPECIFICATIONS

iDISPLAY

The “main” feature of the 14 Plus is the bigger screen over the base 14, packing a 6.7-inch Super Retina XDR OLED-based screen. All those terms strung together might not make much sense, but you should be able to get the idea that it means particle details can pop out from the screen. Playing rock-paper-scissors with the Electro Hypostasis hasn’t looked better.

Thanks to it being an OLED screen, it does mean it’s generally great for anything with bright colours. Things get to show their ‘true’ vibrancy on a level similar to household televisions, all the more impressive that you can have it in your palm.

iCHEESE

The base 14 series has one less lens, which isn’t as big as a deal as you might fear. The primary loss is the Macro Lens, ‘only’ leaving you with a 12MP Ultrawide lens and main 12MP lens for some great photos regardless, in tandem with the new Photonic Engine and the A15 Bionic Chip.

For those of you who’ve had much maligned poor quality iPhone photos in poor lighting, fear not. With the aforementioned tech, the photos turn out quite nicely detailed without needing to use the flash – which remains an option should you need it. Night time photos will no longer be tragic featureless shots.

Of course, the selfie enthusiast has features for them too. TrueDepth, as the name suggests, adds a depth effect which blurs the background behind your subject. It even works for non-humans! The effect itself is the same one you get from the main camera’s portrait mode. It’s time to use that selfie camera to work alongside iOS 16’s Dynamic Wallpaper for wonderful close-ups of your figures, or, I don’t know, loveydovey shots, if you’re so inclined.

iGAMING

On one hand, we have the old reliable benchmark, Genshin Impact. On the other, we have LEGO Brawls, which you can find on Apple Arcade.

Starting off with LEGO Brawls, yes, I can confirm it runs well and controls feel very responsive as you wrangle against 7 other LEGO figures. Considering it being a brawler game, not losing sight of your little LEGO self would be something you’d think is important; in this case, there’s no issue thanks to the game running at a good enough resolution. As expected, the framerate is stable too, even though everyone’s manic running and in-game hazards can fill up the screen causing you to die in very embarrassing ways.

Entering the world of Teyvat on the iPhone 14 Plus runs surprisingly well, for the most part. With the High preset, I can try wander around without noticeable dips in framerate. I say try, because as well as the game runs, the 14 Plus isn’t immune to the heating problems that you can find on pretty much any other phone out there trying to run Genshin Impact.

Wonderfully enough, the battery performance from the most recent iterations of the iPhones is reiterated here. Photography, LEGO Brawls and Genshin Impact in one extended sitting didn’t seem to chunk out the battery all that much, even WITH screen recording active.

i6OS

With iOS 16, you gotta have your latest phones use it to the fullest. One of these features is Dynamic Wallpaper: you can set an image for the lockscreen and apply a 3D effect that can partially obscure the clock for this particular Aesthetic. On top of that, multiple lockscreens is also an option which you can set to rotate hourly or on each tap.

In addition to that, you can have the phone try make transparent versions of your photos. The OS is your oyster!

Focus Mode has been expanded to allow tweaking of settings to turn off notifications from certain applications.

There’s a bunch of other features as well, such as an expanded Focus Mode letting you tweak your settings like turning off notifications from certain apps. I wasn’t about to go try it out, but there’s also a crash detection feature that is supposed to be able to call for help should you get into an accident. God forbid this feature does actually get utilized, but there it be.

iSEXY

Sans case, the purple – which looks closer to a pastel shade – is just pretty. I generally prefer heavier phones – the case can add a surprising heft – but objectively, the phone’s quite thin with a sturdy aluminum frame. From the get go, the bigger screen is already breaking the norm for the base iPhone line, since they’re normally reserved for the Pro versions. If you want more screen real estate without shelling out for the Pro, the the iPhone 14 Plus is a pretty good middle ground.

Other things to note is that the iPhone 14 Plus, like it’s predecessor from last year, does not have a plug head and only provides a USB-C to Lightning cable in the box. Additionally, it does not have the Dynamic Island feature of the Pro series.

iCONCLUDE

Not fully sold on the Pro series features, but still want a little more out of your iPhone 14? The iPhone 14 Plus feels pretty much catered to you. If you haven’t upgraded your phone for a while now, then by all means, this phone is a safe bet to suit most, if not all, of your needs. It runs some of the most demanding games well, it’s got a good camera, and it can perform all without killing your battery completely? Can I get a hell yeah?

The only strike against the iPhone 14 Plus is if you already have the 13 series, as the biggest step up you get here is the camera. It’ll be up to you to decide if that alone is worth the cost.

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