MKBHD’s iPhone XR review: no need to panic

Technology YouTuber Marques Brownlee aka MKBHD has published his thorough review of iPhone XR and if you appreciate his work and honest reviews, you should give it a quick watch.

This time around Marques was not among the first wave of young YouTubers that Apple cherry-picked to post their early iPhone XR impressions ahead of the official launch, nor did he get to post his review ahead of launch like most everybody else did.

His thoughts on the display:

The easiest way to make the XR display seem bad is to focus entirely on the numbers of it—don’t even look at the display, look at the specs sheet and the numbers on paper.

It’s less than 1080p and it’s 326 pixels per inch. You know what else has that pixel density? iPhone 4. That’s the easy way to make it look bad. But you know what else has a pixel density of 326 pixels per inch? iPhone 8. That was fine, most people didn’t complain about that and that was a great display.

So really, focusing on the numbers isn’t the most productive thing. Just as important is, well, the actual experience of using this phone and looking at the display. In the practice, the biggest losses for me are no 3D Touch and no OLED.

Apple did bring tap to wake to the XR so you don’t lose that, but obviously the contrast and the blacks when watching video aren’t quite the same with an LCD. Even though this is one of the best LCDs, you’re not gonna have the pitch blacks of an OLED.

And here’s the full review

He continued:

As a matter of fact, what I really noticed the most isn’t the resolution, isn’t the lack of 3D Touch, it’s the bezels. These bezels are a couple of millimeters thicker than the XS are, and noticeable to me every day. And to be fair, after a little while you do get used to it. But as a person that has used an iPhone XS, I much prefer that it looks and feels that much modern to shave one or two millimeters all the way around bezel.

It’s a bummer that I cannot watch full 1080p videos, especially on this larger display—trust me 1440 does look a lot better, I would know—and it’s a downgrade to LCD, and there’s no 3D Touch, but the bezels are to me the most consistently noticeable difference that you’ll have and you have to be OK with them if you’re gonna rock this phone.

TLDR: iPhone XR is the one most people should get, unless you’re a pixel peeper like Marques in which case your dilemma comes down to this simple choice: do I need a higher-resolution OLED screen (and a second rear camera) with pitch blacks and HDR video support so desperately that I’m gonna fork out an extra $250 to upgrade to an XS, or not?

Is that how people should think about buying an XR, do you think?

Let us know in the comments section down below.