In the last version of Minecraft I noticed that the max render distance is of 9 chunks.

I have a powerful IPad and in the latest versions I always had the render distance at 32 chunks and the gameplay was fluid, so I think that you could put in the 1.18 the max render distance at least to 16 chunks because it is for me a huge change  to before be at 32 chunks and now at 9 chunks of render distance.