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Marques Brownlee - iPhone 16e Review: Who Are You?

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Author: Marques Brownlee
Categories: Personal Finance
Tags: finance
Views: 2 · Last viewed: 2026-10-16 08:10 UTC

Short Summary

Main recommendation: Do not buy the iPhone 16e at $599 as a default budget choice; the reviewer could not identify a clear buyer for it, and a refurbished iPhone 15 Pro for about $600 is the better starting point for most people. The 16e is the cheapest new iPhone, but its price has risen so much that it no longer fits the "budget" role the SE line held, and it cuts several features compared with the iPhone 16. The exception is people upgrading from much older phones such as the iPhone 11, 12, or earlier SEs, for whom the reviewer suggests Apple itself seems to target this phone and says it would be a perfectly fine upgrade for them.

Key Points

  • The 16e starts at $599, and the storage upgrades are expensive; the reviewed $900 configuration is not a budget phone, making it much harder to recommend than past $399 and $429 SEs.
  • It reuses the iPhone 14 body (aluminum, flat sides, USB-C, IP68) and adds a new single rear camera and the Action Button, but keeps a 60 Hz 6.1-inch notched display that is less visible in direct sunlight.
  • Cuts relative to the iPhone 16 include a binned A18 chip with one fewer GPU core, only matte black or white colors, no MagSafe, slow 7.5 W Qi wireless charging, and no camera control.
  • The single 48 MP camera uses a much smaller sensor with weaker stabilization, so it lacks cinematic mode, spatial video, macro, and the second lens, and gets soft quickly in low light.
  • The new in-house C1 modem brings efficiency gains and helps battery life, which the reviewer found on par with the iPhone 16 Pro; the modem itself lacks mmWave 5G, and the phone separately lacks ultrawideband.

Details Worth Noting

  • The 16e lacks Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 support, which the reviewer says matters mainly for future-proofing since most users rarely update routers.
  • The C1 modem does not support millimeter wave 5G yet, and the reviewer found no meaningful speed differences in tests.
  • Apple's own comparison tool on its site compares the 16e only against the iPhone 11, 12, 12 mini, and older SEs, suggesting its intended buyers are owners of those models.
  • The reviewer reports the phone gained 0% charge in about half an hour on a desk wireless charger, showing how slow and misaligned charging can be without magnets.

Bottom Line

The iPhone 16e is a fine phone for owners of much older iPhones, but at its current price it does not offer enough over a refurbished iPhone 15 Pro to be a sensible first choice for most buyers.