Apple iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro Lineup Review: Camera Updates and AI-Ready Chips

Consumer Reports purchased the full iPhone 16 lineup, at retail, and completed rigorous testing in our labs, on metrics like battery life, durability, and performance. Those full results and our smartphone ratings are now available for CR members.

The results support my first impressions, first published when the phones were introduced in September. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, I’d recommend buying a brand-new iPhone 16 only if your current device is at least a few years old and truly on the way out—or if you happen to be particularly thrilled by the prospect of Apple Intelligence, which will be available only for the iPhone 16 line and iPhone 15 Pro models, when it begins rolling out later this fall. But if your current iPhone is still chugging along just fine, I doubt you’ll have much FOMO if you wait a while to upgrade. 

With that said, let’s dive into what it’s like to use the new phones, and how they perform in CR’s lab testing.