Video: iPhone 6 beats 6 Plus and all its predecessors in speaker volume test

BY Killian Bell

Published 27 Jan 2015

iPhone-speaker-test

If you’re a long-time iPhone user, you’ll know Apple makes improvements to its smartphone loudspeakers almost every year. It’s not too surprising, then, that the iPhone 6 has the loudest speaker so far — but how much louder is it then its predecessors? Find out in the video below.

“A couple years ago we did a test comparing the speaker volume of the iPhone 2G through iPhone 5,” says iClarified“We’ve received many requests to update the video for Apple’s new devices and so we got together all ten iPhone models to do another comparison video.”

To make the test as accurate and as fair as possible, iClarified used a proper decibel meter — not just an app — and placed it directly under the speaker on each iPhone. They then played the same 10-second sound on each device, one-by-one.

Quite surprisingly, the original iPhone wasn’t the quietest; it reached 94.3 dBA, which is louder than the iPhone 4’s 92.9 dBA. You may also be surprised to see that the iPhone 6, which reached 105.4 dBA, is ever so slightly louder than the larger iPhone 6 Plus, which reached 105 dBA.

Here’s the complete list of results for each device and the original video:

● iPhone 2G: 94.3 dBA
● iPhone 3G: 98.6 dBA
● iPhone 3GS: 103.6 dBA
● iPhone 4: 92.9 dBA
● iPhone 4S: 101.1 dBA
● iPhone 5: 104.0 dBA
● iPhone 5c: 102.0 dBA
● iPhone 5s: 103.6 dBA
● iPhone 6: 105.4 dBA
● iPhone 6+: 105.0 dBA

Of course, speaker volume isn’t everything. While the original iPhone may be slightly louder than more recent models, that doesn’t mean it sounds as good.