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Apple iPhone 14 Audio test

OTHER AVAILABLE TESTS FOR THIS DEVICE

We put the Apple iPhone 14 through our rigorous DXOMARK Audio test suite to measure its performance both at recording sound using its built-in microphones, and at playing audio back through its speakers.

Overview


Key audio specifications include:

  • Two speakers, (One top front firing, one side bottom firing)
  • No Jack audio output
  • Dolby Atmos technology
  • Spatial Audio playback

Scoring

Sub-scores and attributes included in the calculations of the global score.


Apple iPhone 14
141
audio
144
Playback
141

158

138

149

148

162

144

162

91

157

135
Recording
130

147

124

146

107

159

126

170

137

145

146

166

Playback

Pros

  • Good performance in all attributes, with great consistency across them
  • Great timbre performance overall, enriched by a deep low-end extension
  • Great dynamics performance overall
  • Very good spatial performance

Cons

  • Distortion and compression at maximum volume and when watching movies
  • Stereo is still inverted in music app, as in all iPhones

Recording

Pros

  • Good timbre performance overall
  • Good performance when recording loud content such as  concerts
  • Good dynamics performance
  • Good handling of artifacts overall. Wind noise reduction needs some fine-tuning but it works decently

Cons

  • Midrange rendition is too dependent on the use case, and can sound either canny or nasal depending on the app and use case
  • SNR could be greater, as main vocal content is often a bit masked by the ambient noise
  • Poor audio zoom performance


The differences between the iPhone models when it comes to audio playback and recording have usually been minimal. The same holds true now with the release of the iPhone 14 series.

The iPhone 14, which contains the A15 Bionic chipset, shares many of the hardware specs as the 14 Pro Max, which operates on the latest A16 Bionic chip.

Our testers found that in Playback, the iPhone 14’s timbre has a richer midrange than the 14 Pro Max, but the 14’s high-end extension doesn’t reach that of the 14 Pro Max. Dynamics-wise, the other minor difference between the two models is that the iPhone 14’s sound is less impactful than the 14 Pro Max.

In Recording, the testers noticed very slight timbre variations between the models. The iPhone 14’s loudness was also slightly better than that of the 14 Pro Max.
Wind noise reduction on the iPhone 14 was slightly better managed than on the more advanced model.
The audio zoom isn’t a strong point on both models.

Given the similarities between the models and that the iPhone 14’s overall score came in just a point below the 14 Pro Max’s score, well within our margin of error, we direct you to the full test results of the iPhone 14 Pro Max for all the details of the iPhone 14’s audio performance.

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