Marco Arment has been recently toying with the idea of switching from his current iPhone 6 to the uber-sized iPhone 6 Plus. He took it with him on a couple of trips to the British Isles, and this is what he thought about it:

Having used an iPhone 6 full-time from its launch until these 6 Plus experiments over the last few weeks, I can confidently say that neither phone is extremely well-designed. Both have nontrivial and completely avoidable flaws. But the 6 Plus has bigger advantages over the other phones, while the 6 seems to sit in a mediocre middle ground.

CGP Grey summarized the difference well in the aforelinked Hello Internet episode: “I am more and more convinced that the iPhone 6 is the phone for nobody; it’s the in-between phone that has all of the disadvantages of both [the 5S and 6 Plus]”.

It’s an interesting thought. I can definitely see the iPhone 6 as the odd man out, especially given that it’s already too big for my taste so in that regard, it doesn’t really hold a size advantage over the 6 Plus for me. I’m still happily using my iPhone 5S which size-wise, is pretty spot on for my needs but funnily enough, had I decided to upgrade to one of the two new iPhones, it probably would have been the 6 Plus. I mean, if you’re going big, you might as well go all the way and get the extra benefits that come with it, like the better camera and the awesome battery life.

But Marco is not the only one wondering about the 6 Plus. Stephen Hackett has also decided to switch after using the regular 6 for a few months, so it seems this perception is somewhat common, at least inside the tech circle.

For what it’s worth, and after trying the 6 Plus for two weeks, Jason Snell seems to disagree:

People with large hands (or who rely less on one-handed operation) might have a very different experience, but for me it was just too big a device, with not enough functional gain elsewhere. I’m back to the iPhone 6 now and not missing the big guy at all. I don’t disapprove of people who prefer the 6 Plus to the 6—and I know a bunch of my colleagues are definitely rethinking their choices—but I’m afraid I won’t be joining the club.

I have to say I’m leaning more towards Marco’s side on this one, but not by much. I honestly don’t like the idea of carrying a monstrously big phone in my pocket, which is why I decided to stick with my 5S for another year. Who knows, maybe the next generation will go back to featuring a 4-inch model and we’ll have three different sizes to choose from. If so, the smaller one is definitely where I’d feel most at home.

However, if we’re stuck with just the two bigger phones for the foreseeable future, any one of those will be a compromise in my book in terms of size. That said, camera performance is something I’ve come to value extremely highly in my years as an iPhone user and if the camera differences between both models continue to exist, the Plus will still offer a tiny bit more, which will probably be enough to win me over.