iPhone 17 and iPhone Air battery test showdown: We’ve just crowned a new winner

Main takeaways:

• The iPhone 17 Pro Max has great battery life that easily lasts all day with a charge available.
• Our exclusive lab data shows that you don’t need to pay a fortune to get excellent battery life. The $829 iPhone 17 battery lasts as long as the $1,099 iPhone 17 Pro.
• The ultra-thin iPhone Air, with modest battery capacity, outperformed Samsung’s premium Galaxy S25 phones.

I’ve been reviewing Smartphones At CNET for nearly a decade. If there’s one feature people constantly want in a new product iPhone or Android Phone, it has longer battery life.

When Apple launched the new iPhone 17 series And iPhone Air, has spent a lot of time touting the longer battery life of the iPhone 17, 17 Pro, and 17 Pro Max, compared to their predecessors.

Now I and my fellow CNET reviewers have had the opportunity to test these claims.

When submitting iPhone Air And with its ultra-thin design, Apple showed off a slide during its keynote indicating all-day battery life. However, the company downplayed its claim in the next slide when it announced a new MagSafe battery pack designed for the Air, raising concerns that the thinner design could signal a significant sacrifice in battery life.

Your phone’s battery life is affected by multiple variables, such as how bright your screen is or whether your phone has a weak signal from your carrier. The way you use your phone also has a big impact. An internet nerd will have a much different experience with battery life than someone who carries their phone in their bag at work and checks it on breaks.

So, how do you know if battery life is good on the iPhone Air and iPhone 17 series?

CNET tested the battery life of Apple’s new phones in three ways: through anecdotal stress testing, a video streaming test, and monitoring battery life after daily use. We also tested wired and wireless charging. Our lab data showed solid battery life iPhone 17And the 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max, and even Air, especially compared to older iPhone models.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max has excellent battery life

Larger batteries don’t always mean better battery life. There’s more to battery life than the actual size or capacity. Besides Huawei, Apple is the only major smartphone manufacturer that makes its own hardware and software, and can set its phones to run on smaller batteries than most Android phones.

the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max You have larger batteries than last year 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max. If you use eSIM only Version of either phone, such as iPhone On models sold in the US, your battery is larger because it takes up the space where the SIM card tray is located.

Frustratingly, Apple doesn’t share iPhone battery capacity, and part of the reason is that its batteries are often smaller than those in iPhones. Android phones. Fortunately, the European Union requires Apple to publish energy labels that include the capacity of its batteries on its website. Macrumors Capacities found for eSIM models only. You can find out how the new phone batteries compare to those in the iPhone 16 series:

• iPhone Air: 3,149 mAh
• iPhone 17: 3,692 mAh
• iPhone 17 Pro: 4,252 mAh
• iPhone 17 Pro Max: 5,088 mAh
• iPhone 16: 3,561 mAh
• iPhone 16 Plus: 4,674 mAh
• iPhone 16 Pro: 3,582 mAh
• iPhone 16 Pro Max: 4,685 mAh

CNET has two benchmark tests (video streaming and stress tests) that allow us to compare one phone’s battery performance to another. Because we’ve been using these tests for years, we can also compare a new phone to older models.

For example, if you have an iPhone 15 and are thinking about upgrading to an iPhone 17, we can tell you that your new iPhone will have longer battery life out of the box than your old device.

In CNET’s 3-hour video battery test, where we streamed video over Wi-Fi with full screen brightness, the iPhone 17 series performed admirably, even if the results weren’t dramatically better than the iPhone 16 series.

Without a Plus model this year, the iPhone 17 Pro Max is the only model with a large battery (the largest ever in an iPhone), and it lost just 9% in testing. The lower the missing percentage, the better. This is the first time an iPhone has stayed in the single digits, and I should point out that the 17 Pro Max was tied for Motorola Razr (2024) For the best result since we conducted the test. The Razr has a less powerful processor and a smaller main display with a lower resolution and lower brightness.

The iPhone Air and 17 Pro dropped by 15% in the test, the same level iPhone 15. The iPhone 17 lost only 11%, which is better than the iPhone 15 and 16.

What to keep in mind is that the iPhone 17 has a 6.3-inch display that supports a 1-120Hz variable refresh rate and a maximum brightness of 3,000 nits, compared to the iPhone 15 and 16, which have a 6.1-inch display with a 60Hz refresh rate and a maximum brightness of 2,000 nits.

Apple’s new phones performed well in CNET’s 45-minute stress test, during which I played games, streamed videos, browsed social media, and made a video call. The 17 Pro Max fell just one percentage, the best result of the year, but behind the iPhone 16 Plus, which remained at 100% (the best result of any phone).

The iPhone 17 and 17 Pro had the same score, down 2%, making the standard iPhone 17 look like an amazing value. The iPhone Air fell by 5%, matching the iPhone 15 in the same test. For perspective, the Air performed better in this test than the Air Samsung Galaxy S25 series And connect it with Motorola Razr Ultra.

The iPhone Air is having a day

When we review phones, we set them up as a daily driver to use and test them like our own personal phones. Real-world testing is often the best indicator of what the reader can expect to get from the phone.

I started each day with a full battery for my iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max and tracked how much battery I had throughout the day. I finished every day with plenty of battery remaining – even after taking photos and videos or keeping the screen at full brightness while shooting video Video review. Below is a chart of how the iPhone 17 Pro Max battery performed during the first five days I had it.

Likewise, Abrar Al-Hiti, senior technology correspondent at CNET, highlighted that She reviewed the iPhone Air The day regularly ends with about 20% reserve (after starting with a full battery). She said it would drop to less than 20% on days of heavy use by the time she was ready for bed.

“It’s impressive that my iPhone Air has continued to work throughout the day for the past few weeks that I’ve been using it,” Al-Hiti said. “But I barely had to touch that MagSafe battery pack to extend battery life through the day, which is reassuring.”

In our tests, a fully charged MagSafe battery added 69% to the iPhone Air’s battery. When I asked her if she would recommend people buy the $99 MagSafe Air Battery, Al-Hiti said she would recommend it to someone who uses their phone a lot and doesn’t want to search for an outlet.

“I don’t like the idea of ​​having to carry an extra battery, no matter how thin or stylish it is, so I don’t tend to carry it with me unless I know I’m going to have a long day away from home,” Al-Hiti said.

She too Browse the iPhone 17 benchmark He said it can easily last for a little more than a day, even after taking photos, scrolling through social media, listening to audiobooks and music, texting, and watching videos.

The Hiti review notes that over the course of several days, it would start with a full battery, between 8:30 and 9:30 a.m., and get a 44% to 47% charge after 12 hours. If you don’t recharge your iPhone 17 overnight, it will still have about 30% to spare the next morning.

The iPhone 17 series charges quickly

There are two ways to charge an iPhone: using a cable or using MagSafe (unless… iPhone 16ewhich does not have MagSafe, only Qi charging). For wired charging, Apple recommends using a 40W charger with iPhone 17, 17 Pro, and 17 Pro Max and a 20W charger with iPhone Air. However, Apple doesn’t include a charger in the box, just a USB-C cable, but the company sells a 40W charger for $39 and a 20W charger for $19.

In a 30-minute wired charging test, the new phones, including the Air, performed well. The iPhone 17, 17 Pro, and 17 Pro Max added 10% or more than the iPhone 16, 16 Pro, and 16 Pro Max in the same test. Apple says the 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max can be recharged to 50% in 20 minutes. In our tests, the iPhone 17 Pro achieved 53%, while the iPhone 17 Pro Max achieved 49% after 20 minutes.

iPhone Air reached 49% in a 30-minute charge test using a 20W adapter, the same performance as the iPhone 16 and iPhone 15 Pro, besting the iPhone 15 Plus.

As for wireless or MagSafe charging, we ran a 30-minute test using the latest MagSafe charger and a 30W power adapter. The iPhone 17 and Air series outperformed every iPhone we’ve ever tested except the iPhone 16 Pro, which performed better than the Air and the standard iPhone 17. I should note that iPhones don’t come with a MagSafe charger or 30W adapter in the box.

Which iPhone should you buy based on CNET Labs data?

Get the iPhone 17 Pro Max if you want the best battery life. The standard iPhone 17 has great battery life and is inches ahead of the more expensive iPhone 17 Pro. And if you’re a member of Team Air, you know that the battery life isn’t great, but depending on how hard you use it, you should get through a full day on a single charge.

I should point that out as well iOS 26 He has new Adaptive strength situation. This feature learns your phone’s usage patterns and “adapts” to how much power the processor uses for specific tasks, thus consuming less battery power. The new feature takes a week to start working. I ran it after running CNET’s battery tests and will update this story with any changes or improvements that come from it.

Finally, if you have an iPhone and the only problem is that its battery no longer charges as much as it used to, consider replacing it with a new one. Not only will doing so be hundreds of dollars cheaper than a new iPhone, but it could extend the life of your phone by a few more years.