MARQUES BROWNLEE USHERS ME INTO HIS ROBOT ROOM, WHERE I STAND FACE-TO-FACE WITH COLOSSUS. AN IMPOSING YET GRACEFUL CONTRAPTION, THE APTLY NAMED $250,000 MECHANICAL ARM TOWERS OVER MY 6-FOOT-3 HOST, WHO IS GIVING ME A GUIDED TOUR THROUGH HIS STUDIO IN KEARNY, NEW JERSEY, ON A LATE-AUGUST MORNING.
Brownlee is YouTube's preeminent maker of videos about newly released technology, and he acquired the rig to perform swoopy camera pans with more balletic precision than any human cinematographer could muster. The resulting shots have become a signature element of his gadget reviews. “So we built a dedicated set for it,” he explains matter-of-factly.
Located in a rehabbed shipyard that's also home to a helicopter-tour service and numerous logistics companies, Brownlee's 7,000-square-foot facility is filled with high-end production gear. Some of the products he's reviewed recently for his audience, which includes 17.7 million subscribers, are still hanging around—such as a shiny red casket, which he featured in a video after impulsively deciding to review every product pitched to him for a month. (The video got more than 5 million views.)
Also on premises are some of Brownlee's 13 employees, a young and mostly male crew who talk among themselves about a soon-to-be-released smartphone as Brownlee gets back to work at his own desk a few steps away.
Brownlee, who turns 30 in December, has come a long way since he began shooting videos about tech hardware and software in his family's suburban New Jersey home at age 15. (He uploaded the results under the nom de YouTube of MKBHD— for “Marques Keith Brownlee” and “high definition”—a moniker that has been synonymous with his own name ever since.) By the time he was in college, he was a phenomenon: In 2013, Google's then senior VP of engineering, Vic Gundotra, declared Brownlee “the best technology reviewer on the planet.”
Brownlee's rise reflects a fundamental transformation that has played out in the tech-review ecosystem. In the past, tech critics gained power through their affiliation with major news outlets. But as the old guard moved on — Walt Mossberg and David Pogue both left their print perches in 2013—YouTube offered upstart reviewers a platform that no traditional media brand could match, especially for reaching young people who'd grown up on the the , , and combined.
