Technologies

Which 2025 iPhone Has the Best Battery? I’ve Crowned a New Power Winner

I looked at three years of exclusive CNET data of iPhone performance to find out which models hold their charges best.

Key takeaways:

The iPhone 17 Pro Max has outstanding battery life that easily lasts all day with charge to spare.
Our exclusive lab data shows you don’t need to pay over a grand for excellent battery life. The $829 iPhone 17’s battery lasts just as long as the $1,099 iPhone 17 Pro.
The ultrathin iPhone Air, with a modest battery capacity, outlasted Samsung’s premium Galaxy S25 phones.

You might say that battery life is just a small consideration when buying a new iPhone or Android phone now, but that stance gets shaky when you’re staring down a sliver of red in the battery gauge and have nowhere to plug in. After reviewing smartphones for over a decade, I’ve learned that longer battery life is the one feature people consistently want from their phones.

When Apple launched the new iPhone 17 series and iPhone Air, it spent considerable time touting the longer battery life of the iPhone 17, 17 Pro, and 17 Pro Max, as compared to their predecessors.

My fellow CNET reviewers and I have now had the chance to test those claims.

When introducing the iPhone Air and its super slim design, Apple showed a slide during its keynote stating that it has all-day battery life. However, the company undercut its claim on the next slide when it announced a new MagSafe battery pack designed for the Air, which fed into fears that a thinner design might indicate a significant sacrifice to battery life.

Your phone’s battery life is affected by multiple variables, like how bright you keep your display or if your phone has a weak signal from your carrier. How you use your phone has a big impact, too. Someone who is obsessively online will have a much different experience with their battery life than someone who has their phone in their bag at work and checks it on breaks.

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

CNET tested the new Apple phones’ battery life three ways: through an anecdotal stress test, a video streaming test and observing battery life after everyday use. We also tested wired and wireless charging. Our lab data showed strong battery life for the iPhone 17, 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max and even the Air, especially compared to older iPhone models.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max has excellent battery life

Bigger batteries don’t always mean superior battery life. There’s more to battery life than the physical size or capacity. Besides Huawei, Apple is the only major smartphone maker that builds its own hardware and software and can tune its phones to work off smaller batteries than most Android phones have.

The iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max have larger batteries than last year’s 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max. If you’re using an eSIM-only version of either phone, like the iPhone models sold in the US, your battery is even bigger because it takes up the space where the SIM card tray would be.

Frustratingly, Apple doesn’t share the capacity of the iPhone’s batteries, and part of the reason is that its batteries are often smaller than those in Android phones. Fortunately, the EU requires that Apple publish energy labels that include the capacity of its batteries on its site. Macrumors found the capacities for eSIM-only models. You can see how the new phones’ batteries compare to the ones 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 the battery performance of one phone against another. And because we’ve been using these tests for years, we can also compare a new phone against older models.

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

In CNET’s 3-hour video battery test, where we streamed a video over Wi-Fi with the screen at full brightness, the iPhone 17 series did terrific, even if the results were not dramatically better than the iPhone 16 series.

Without a Plus model this year, the iPhone 17 Pro Max is the only model with a big battery (the biggest one ever in an iPhone), and it only lost 9% in the test. The lower the percentage lost, the better. This is the first time an iPhone stayed in single digits, and I should note that the 17 Pro Max tied the Motorola Razr (2024) for the best score since we’ve been running the test. The Razr has a less powerful processor and a smaller main screen with a lower resolution and less brightness.

The iPhone Air and 17 Pro dropped 15% in the test, the same as the iPhone 15. And the iPhone 17 lost only 11%, better than the iPhone 15 and 16.

Something to keep in mind is that the iPhone 17 has a 6.3-inch screen that supports a 1-120Hz variable refresh rate and a max 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 max brightness of 2,000 nits.

The new Apple phones did well in CNET’s 45-minute endurance test, during which I played games, streamed videos, scrolled social media and took a video call. The 17 Pro Max only dropped a single percent, the best result this year, but behind the iPhone 16 Plus, which stayed at 100% (the best result for any phone).

The iPhone 17 and 17 Pro had the same result, dropping 2%, making the standard iPhone 17 look even more like an incredible value. The iPhone Air dropped 5%, which matches the iPhone 15 in the same test. For perspective, the Air did better in this test than the Samsung Galaxy S25 series and tied with the Motorola Razr Ultra.

The iPhone Air gets through a day

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

I started each day with a full battery for the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max and tracked how much battery I had throughout the day. I ended each day with plenty of battery left — even after shooting photos and videos or keeping the screen at full brightness while filming the review video. Below is a chart that shows how the iPhone 17 Pro Max’s battery performed for the first five days I had it.

Similarly, CNET senior technology reporter Abrar Al-Heeti highlights that the iPhone Air she reviewed regularly ends the day with about 20% to spare (after starting with a full battery). She said it would drop below 20% on heavier-use days by the time she was ready for bed.

«Impressively, the iPhone Air has consistently lasted all day over the last several weeks I’ve been using it,» Al-Heeti said. «But I’ve hardly had to touch that MagSafe battery pack to extend battery life during the day, which is reassuring.»

In our testing, a fully-charged MagSafe battery added 69% to the iPhone Air’s battery. When I asked her whether she’d recommend people buy the $99 MagSafe Battery for the Air, Al-Heeti said that she recommends it for someone who uses their phone often and doesn’t want to hunt for an outlet.

«I don’t like the idea of having to lug around an extra battery, no matter how thin or sleek 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-Heeti said.

She also reviewed the standard iPhone 17 and said it can easily last a little over a day, even after snapping photos, scrolling through social media, listening to audiobooks and music, texting and watching videos.

Al-Heeti’s review notes that over several days, she’d start with a full battery, between 8:30 and 9:30 a.m., and have 44% to 47% of a charge 12 hours later. If she didn’t recharge the iPhone 17 overnight, she’d still have about 30% to spare the next morning.

The iPhone 17 series charges fast

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

In our 30-minute wired charging test, the new phones, including the Air, did 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 recharge to 50% in 20 minutes. In our tests, the iPhone 17 Pro hit 53% and the iPhone 17 Pro Max hit 49% after 20 minutes.

The iPhone Air reached 49% in our 30-minute charging test with a 20W adapter, the same as the iPhone 16 and iPhone 15 Pro, beating the iPhone 15 Plus.

In wireless charging or MagSafe charging, we ran a 30-minute test with the latest MagSafe charger and a 30W power adapter. The iPhone 17 series and Air beat every iPhone we’ve ever tested except the iPhone 16 Pro, which did better than the Air and 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 inches out the more expensive iPhone 17 Pro. And if you’re on Team Air, know that the battery life isn’t great, but depending on how hard you use it, you should get through a day on a single charge.

I should also note that iOS 26 has a new Adaptive Power mode. This feature learns your phone’s use patterns and «adapts» how much power the processor uses for specific tasks, so it draws less from the battery. The new feature takes a week to start working. I turned it on after running CNET’s battery tests and will update this story with any changes or improvements that come from it.

Last, if you have an iPhone and the only issue is that its battery doesn’t charge as much as it used to, think about replacing it with a new one. Doing so will not only be hundreds of dollars cheaper than a new iPhone, but it can extend your phone’s life another couple of years.

Technologies

Gamers Don’t Do Spring Cleaning, We Do Spring Upgrades With These Early Amazon Deals

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for March 18, #1011

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for March 18 #1011.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is pretty tricky, but musicians might find the blue group easy. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Time between two things, maybe.

Green group hint: That smarts!

Blue group hint: Rockers know these well.

Purple group hint: You might write one out to pay a bill.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Interval.

Green group: React to a stubbed toe.

Blue group: Guitar effects pedals.

Purple group: ____ check.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is interval. The four answers are patch, period, spell and stretch.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is react to a stubbed toe. The four answers are curse, hop, wince and yell.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is guitar effects pedals. The four answers are delay, reverb, wah and whammy.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ____ check. The four answers are blank, coat, rain and reality.

Toughest Connections puzzles

We’ve made a note of some of the toughest Connections puzzles so far. Maybe they’ll help you see patterns in future puzzles.

#5: Included «things you can set,» such as mood, record, table and volleyball.

#4: Included «one in a dozen,» such as egg, juror, month and rose.

#3: Included «streets on screen,» such as Elm, Fear, Jump and Sesame.

#2: Included «power ___» such as nap, plant, Ranger and trip.

#1: Included «things that can run,» such as candidate, faucet, mascara and nose.

Technologies

My Kid Wanted Video Games. I Was Against It. This Console Gave Us Both the Win

The movement-based Nex Playground might be the antidote to parental screen time guilt.

When our 8-year-old started asking for video games, I knew we were about to engage in an uphill battle. Anytime we’ve been to friends’ houses with gaming consoles, he goes full zombie mode, then has an epic meltdown once the sensory overload wears off. And since he inevitably ropes his 6-year-old brother in, we’re essentially sealing both their fates.

So when our neighbors started raving about a movement-based gaming console called Nex Playground, my first instinct was to shut it down. The words «gaming console» alone were enough to put me in a mental block. Add in my own memories of Wii tennis sessions where I nearly took out the ceiling fan, and I was firmly in the «no» camp.

But after doing a little more research, I was intrigued enough to try it out.

Screen time isn’t something I take lightly. With three kids ages 2 to 8, my husband and I have always been intentional about how and what they watch. They don’t have their own tablets, and most of their screen time happens on our family TV, which means whatever the oldest is exposed to quickly trickles down to our toddler. So anything we bring into the house has to work for all of them. Tall order, I know, but the Nex Playground gets surprisingly close.

Getting started is easy

The console itself is refreshingly simple. It’s a small cube, slightly larger than a Rubik’s cube, with a circular camera and motion sensor, a light indicator and two ports for power, and an HDMI connection to the TV. There’s no controller beyond a basic remote for navigating menus. For most games, your body is the controller.

Setup is quick. Plug it in, connect it to your TV, and you’re ready to go. It doesn’t store video or upload footage to the cloud, which was an immediate plus. It also comes with a magnetic privacy cover that you can put on the lens when it’s not in use.

At $250, it’s not cheap, but it’s less than some of the popular gaming consoles for this age range, like the Nintendo Switch 2. That gets you a five-game starter pack: Fruit Ninja, Go Keeper (soccer), Starri (think Guitar Hero for your whole body), Party Fowl (an AR emoji frenzy) and Whack-a-Mole. Additional games require a subscription: $89 a year or $49 for three months, which unlocks a library of 50-plus games and counting. New titles dropped even as I was writing this.

The library spans a surprisingly wide range. There are board game adaptations like Connect Four and Candy Land, character-driven games with Peppa Pig, Bluey and the Ninja Turtles, and sports like baseball and, yes, tennis — minus the ceiling fan hazard. There’s even parent-friendly content like Zumba workouts, which I may or may not have fully committed to on a rainy afternoon.

Even my toddler has gotten in on the action, mostly bouncing her way through Hungry Hungry Hippos when her brothers finally concede.

Gameplay is where it wins

The movements range from swinging your arms to keep a ball in motion, hopping or full-body launches that are far more aggressive than what the game actually requires. (I’m not about to tell the kids otherwise.) After a 45-minute session, my kids are tired and sometimes even drenched in sweat. The Nex Playground entertains and burns energy in one fell swoop.

The graphics also seem intentionally simple and arcade-like, which fits the minimalist play experience. There’s no POV storyline to get lost in, no leveling up into a new world at 9 p.m. on a school night. Some games keep score, which awakens my kids’ competitive streak, but the vibe is more collaborative and hasn’t been the catalyst for more fighting like other games. If anything, it’s done the opposite.

I still don’t love defaulting to a screen when my kids are bored, so we try to use it in moderation. In our house, piano practice is the only thing that unlocks weekend play time, and the fact that they’ll sit at the piano for a full hour tells you everything you need to know.

The verdict that matters most

But the real test: Does it hold up to an 8-year-old who was dead set on a Nintendo Switch?

Short answer: yes. At least for now. He’d still pick the Switch if you asked him, but not for the reasons you’d expect.

«The Playground is more tiring,» he told me, which only helped seal the deal for me. His current favorite is Homerun Hitters. «It’s basically a baseball game where you go against ranked global players. Me and my brother are really good at it.»

This from a kid whose primary hobby is annoying his younger brother. The fact that he said «me and my brother» as a collective was an unexpected bonus.

The Switch may still show up on the Christmas list this year. And realistically, I know I’m on borrowed time. As kids get older, «cool» becomes the currency, and a motion-based cube probably won’t hold up against an Xbox or a Switch once playdates turn into side-by-side gaming sessions.

The Nex Playground isn’t a replacement for those. It’s more of a detour; it gives them a taste of gaming without all the usual side effects. Even if I do eventually cave, I can still see it sticking around for the occasional family game night or as a rainy-day sibling diffuser.

In the meantime, I’ll relish this simpler version of gaming while I still can. He’s not exactly rushing me to return this review unit. More importantly, neither am I.