Macworld - USA (2022-01)

JANUARY 2022 MACWORLD 61

advantage of the extra space in the horns.
It’s enough to make the general
experience slightly more pleasant and the
notch slightly less intrusive, however.
Apple has also ratcheted up the screen’s
maximum brightness in typical use, from 625
to 800 nits. The maximum HDR brightness
remains 1,200 nits. If you like small phones,
the iPhone 13 mini’s screen will keep you
plenty happy—it’s basically the iPhone 13 but
smaller. That smallness means it’s extremely
comfortable to hold and carry. In a world of
Plus, Ultra, and Max phones, that’s
something of a rarity, and it’s refreshing to
easily use a phone with one hand.

PERFORMANCE
All four 13-series iPhones have the same
processor: the A15 Bionic. That isn’t to say
they will produce identical performance,
however, since the 13 and 13 mini have
4GB of RAM, whereas the 13 Pro and 13
Pro Max have 6GB.
Still, the iPhone 13 mini is capable of
outstanding processing performance and
produced elite numbers throughout our
benchmarking. In Geekbench 5’s CPU test
it scored an exceptional 1,725 (single-core)
and 4,622 (multi-core), compared to 1594
and 4,094 for the iPhone 12 mini. That’s a
year-on-year increase of 8.2 percent and
12.9 percent, respectively.
This theoretical improvement will be far
less noticeable in real-world use, for the

simple reason that the 12 mini’s A14 chip is

comfortably fast enough to run anything on

the App Store. I found the 13 mini slick and

responsive throughout testing, but I feel

exactly the same about my iPhone 12 and 12

Pro. This is a question of future-proofing: The

A15 and A14 are both very fast now, but the

A15 will still be fast for roughly a year longer

as app developers gradually introduce

more-demanding elements to take

advantage of the more powerful hardware.

Another difference between the

standard and Pro iPhones this year is the

GEEKBENCH 5

Single-core

1,594

1,725

1,740

1,595

HIGHER SCORES ARE BETTER

iPhone 13 Pro

iPhone 13 mini

iPhone 12 Pro

iPhone 12 mini

iPhone 11 Pro 1,335

GEEKBENCH 5

Multi-core

4,094

4,622

4,794

4,032

HIGHER SCORES ARE BETTER

iPhone 13 Pro

iPhone 13 mini

iPhone 12 Pro

iPhone 12 mini

iPhone 11 Pro

Sony Xperia 1 III

3,390

3,658