That’s really all you need to know about it, honestly. If you’d rather have an iPhone with the best possible battery life than an iPhone with the very newest features, then the iPhone 14 Plus is the one for you.
The 14 Plus is the big-screen version of the standard iPhone 14. This year, rather than going iPhone Mini / iPhone Big, Apple went iPhone Big / iPhone Bigger. It shares nearly all the same features but offers a 6.7-inch screen compared to the standard 14’s 6.1-inch display. It also claims the best battery life of any iPhone — officially, Apple calls it “all-day battery life,” but in my experience, you can get much more than that.
Oh, and there’s one more distinct difference: the Plus starts at $899, while the regular 14 starts at $799. That makes it the least expensive 6.7-inch iPhone released yet, but it’s still far from cheap.
What the iPhone 14 Plus doesn’t include are the new display features on the 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max. That’s the shape-shifting notch called Dynamic Island that displays system status indicators and an always-on display that shows a dim version of your wallpaper even when the screen is locked. They’re handy features, but they’re more of a sign of what’s to come for the iPhone than must-haves. Instead, the 14 Plus provides the kind of quality-of-life upgrades that a lot of people want from a new phone right now.
The 14 Plus’ display features a slightly higher 2778 x 1284 resolution than the 14’s, so even though it’s much bigger, it maintains roughly the same pixels-per-inch (458ppi compared to 460ppi on the 14). That means images look just as sharp on this screen — they’re just, you know, bigger, and you can see more emails or parts of a webpage before you need to start scrolling.
There’s no ProMotion, super-smooth scrolling 120Hz refresh rate here, which is a shame. Apple’s still reserving that for the Pro models, long after fast refresh rates have become the norm for Android phones at the same price. It’s not something you’ll miss if you’re coming from a phone with the same standard 60Hz refresh rate, but I did notice it when I switched from the 14 Pro — maybe even more so because the screen is so big. On the other hand, the lower refresh rate is less power-intensive and probably contributes to the 14 Plus’ excellent battery performance. I think that’s a tradeoff most people will happily live with.
This is probably an obvious point, but the feeling of having more visual space while using this phone — especially compared to a 6.1-inch model — is real. More text fits onto its screen, and games and videos are a little more immersive. But it also very much handles like a big phone. It’s a real struggle to use it one-handed, even with the iOS 16’s “reachability” UI controls. Lots of people get along with a big phone just fine, but the 6.1-inch 14 and 14 Pro feel much more comfortable in my hand.
It may be big, but the 14 Plus is lighter than I expected it to be. It weighs 7.16 ounces (203g), or just about an ounce (28g) more than the iPhone 14 — and a little less than the 6.1-inch 14 Pro. Its light weight was something I appreciated every time it came clattering out of the pocket of my joggers because this phone doesn’t truly fit in any pants pocket I own. In use, it makes the 14 Plus feel a little easier to handle than the Pro Max iPhones.
The screen is this phone’s big draw, but the extra real estate lends itself to the 14 Plus’ other killer feature: battery for days. MacRumors reports that there is indeed a much bigger cell in the 14 Plus than in the standard 14 — on par with the battery in the 14 Pro Max. But because the 14 Plus doesn’t have all of those fancy, new, power-hungry display features, it manages to eke out better battery performance.
Apple’s claim of the “best battery life in an iPhone” isn’t an exaggeration. Typically, a day of moderate use with about two hours of screen-on time and plenty of time away from Wi-Fi only drained the battery by about 25 percent in my experience. I even managed to get three days of use on a single charge. Reader, I can’t remember the last time I used an iPhone that comfortably made it through multiple days of use.
Not everyone should expect multiday performance. With heavier use like extended periods of gaming or video streaming, two days feels more reasonable, and that might mean pushing into the single digits by the end of day two. My two hours of screen-on time isn’t a whole lot, but I didn’t take it easy on the 14 Plus by any means. Throughout each day, I used some navigation, connected to 5G rather than Wi-Fi as often as I could, and recorded some short video clips. And at the end of every day, I felt like I should have pushed the phone’s remaining battery percentage much lower than I had. Color me impressed.