I’ve been using the iPhone X for a week — and it’s definitely worth the $1,000 price tag

Apple’s highly anticipated and long-awaited iPhone X is finally out. We got our hands on one and rigorously tested everything we could with it for over a week. Here's our review, and final thoughts, on the device. The following is the transcript of the video.

STEVE KOVACH: I've been using the iPhone X for about a week now, and the big question on everyone's mind is whether or not it's worth a thousand bucks. And I can definitely say it is.

As soon as you take this thing out the box you realize Apple nailed the form factor. It's a 5.8-inch screen crammed onto a phone not much larger than the iPhone 8. So it fits well in your hand and you get plenty of screen to view the content on.

And I know there have been a lot of concerns over Face ID, that new facial recognition system, but I haven't been able to trick it. It works nearly flawlessly. Face ID works just as well, if not better, than Touch ID. And it works in a variety of conditions. There are a couple things you have to get used to though. Again, using Face ID works well, but you have to get used to holding your phone up to your face so it has your attention and unlocks. That's a lot different than Touch ID when you can just unlock it while holding it down.

And no home button means you have a new swiping gesture to get around, and that takes a little getting used to as well.

As for cameras, the front-facing TrueDepth Camera not only enables Face ID, it lets you do cool things like augmented reality and a Portrait mode on the selfie camera for the first time. The rear cameras are not much different than the iPhone 8 Plus cameras you can still do Portrait mode and Portrait Lighting

Now for the downsides. My biggest problem with the iPhone X is that many apps haven’t adapted properly for the new screen size and shape. You see a lot of funky UI things going on. I think it's gonna take a couple months for app developers to come up with new ways to design their apps around the iPhone X screen.

There's also the question of whether or not the iPhone X is a lot better than the 8. On the inside, they’re almost identical. They have the same processor. So if you go with the iPhone 8, you're gonna have almost the same performance as you would get with the iPhone X. What you're really paying for with the iPhone X is the new form factor and Face ID.

If you want the best of the best, yes … the iPhone X is worth every penny. It's something you're using all the time and most people won't be paying that $1,000 right up front. All carriers offer payment plans and Apple has its own payment plan as well. If you have an iPhone 7 or earlier, this does feel like a brand new phone and a nice upgrade. Although, the iPhone 7 is only a year old so you might want to hang onto that. But, if you have an iPhone 6 or earlier you should definitely upgrade to the iPhone X.

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