The iPhone 16 Pro's High-Resolution Slow-Motion Video: Apple's Best Feature in Years

There’s a saying that everything looks better in slow motion. You could record someone taking a sip of a drink, and slow-mo can transform that mundane activity into something dramatic, graceful and ethereal. When Apple announced the new iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max could record slow-mo footage at 4K resolution and 120 frames per second, I actually sat forward in my seat.

Until now, slow-motion recording on phones was a novelty at best, mainly because it didn’t look good. Slow-mo iPhone videos were such a large step down in terms of image quality from a regular video recording. Maybe if you were lucky and had bright, even lighting (think outdoors on a sunny day), you could snag a fun slow-motion clip of your kids playing or a dog doing a trick. But these clips, even at HD resolution, looked just OK and really didn’t inspire wanting to film more in slow-mo.

Oftentimes, if I was documenting something important and had to choose between recording a video or slow motion on the iPhone, I’d go the standard video route because I didn’t want to risk having a slow-motion clip that looked crap-tacular when I could have a non-slow-motion video that looked great.

Thanks to Apple’s release of the new iPhone 16 Pro, those days are behind us. Now you don’t have to choose between shooting regular and slow-motion video if you’re worried about image quality. And at a time many of us are holding our breaths waiting for Apple Intelligence to land on the iPhone 16 Pro, Apple’s new 4K slow-mo feature is already here and available right out of the box. And I think it’s Apple’s best new feature for the iPhone in years because it works better than advertised. (Satellite texting in iOS 18 is a close second.) I’ve never been able to shoot slow-motion videos so easily that look this good from an iPhone.

The slow-mo videos I shot while testing the iPhone 16 Pro look incredible, whether I was filming a rehearsal of a lion dance in Lion Dance Me’s medium-lit warehouse, broken microwave pieces flying dramatically through the air at Bay Area Smash Room or CNET’s Jesse Orrall snacking on a slice of Detroit-style pizza. Slow-mo footage from the 16 Pro has sharp details, a decent dynamic range and skin tones look on par with non-slow-motion recordings I made on the iPhone.

But Apple isn’t the first phonemaker to push the bounds of slow-motion recording. In 2018, Samsung released the Galaxy S9, which had a Super Slow Motion mode to record video at 960fps, eight times faster (or slower in playback) than the 16 Pro’s 120fps. But the image quality looked like garbage because the resolution topped out at 720p. And it was tricky to record because 0.2 seconds of action would result in a 6-second video clip.

Two years later, Sony released the Xperia 5 II, which was the first phone to have 4K 120fps slow motion. Like the iPhone 16 Pro, the Xperia’s slow-mo footage looks incredible. But unlike Apple’s new Pro phone, the Xperia 5 II uses a special Cinematic camera app to record the footage, and it can be a bit tedious altering the video’s playback speed or getting it out of the app. Not to mention, it didn’t do too well indoors or under medium or low-light conditions, which is where the iPhone 16 Pro’s slow-mo does an incredible job and still looks fantastic.

Apple’s 4K slow-mo is built into the default Camera app. You just swipe to Slow Motion and start rolling – that’s it. (The very first time you want to record 4K slow-mo, you need to enable the feature under the Camera section in the Settings app.)

The iPhone 16 Pro is made for the mainstream, whereas Sony’s Xperia line was aimed at photographers, filmmakers and other creative types – many of whom have found their way to the iPhone because of the consistent quality of photos and videos from Apple’s cameras (which use Sony’s image sensors).

I should admit that I am a proud camera nerd and an award-winning short filmmaker, so I tend to be biased toward photo and video features. I don’t expect everyone getting an iPhone 16 Pro to use 4K slow motion, let alone think that it’s the best feature. If you’re getting an iPhone 16 Pro, try the 4K 120fps feature out. If you’re not impressed, you never have to use it again. But you might be taken aback by what you see and want to film more.