Marques Brownlee: From New Jersey Screencasts to YouTube’s Top Tech Reviewer
Marques Brownlee at SXSW in 2026. Photo: Jay Dixit / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Marques Brownlee started out recording screencasts as a high school student in New Jersey. By the mid-2020s, the videos he makes under the name MKBHD had drawn more than 20 million subscribers on YouTube, according to his Wikipedia biography, making him one of the most recognized consumer technology reviewers in the country.
Brownlee was born Dec. 3, 1993, in Maplewood Township, New Jersey, and grew up there. He graduated from Columbia High School in 2011. He then attended the Howe School at Stevens Institute of Technology, earning a Bachelor of Science in Information Systems in May 2015.
From screencasts to a studio
He joined YouTube on March 21, 2008, and began uploading in January 2009. The early videos were screencasts about products he owned or had just bought.
His profile rose in July 2014, when a scratch test of a rumored sapphire iPhone 6 display went viral. The Verge, CNET and Time were among the outlets that covered it. He reached 10 million subscribers on Dec. 18, 2019.
In 2016 he moved production out of his apartment. He now works from a studio in Kearny, New Jersey.
The operation has grown into a small family of channels:
- The main channel, Marques Brownlee, which carries the product reviews
- The Studio, a behind-the-scenes channel
- Waveform, a technology podcast he began co-hosting in August 2019, with a companion clips channel
- Auto Focus, a channel devoted to cars
- MKBHD Shorts, for short-form video
In December 2019, YouTube published Retro Tech, a series produced by Vox Media Studios.
Business ventures and recognition
Forbes put Brownlee on its 30 Under 30 list in the social media category in December 2020. In April 2023 he collaborated with the footwear company Atoms on a high-top called the Sneaker 251. In February 2024 he joined Ridge, which makes everyday accessories, as a board member and chief creative partner.
He delivered the commencement address at Stevens in May 2024 and received an honorary Doctor of Business Administration there. Time named him to its TIME100 list of the most influential people in artificial intelligence that year.
Not every project went smoothly. Brownlee launched Panels, a wallpaper app for iOS and Android, in September 2024. Critics objected to its subscription price of $12 a month or $50 a year, the ads shown to free users, privacy concerns and AI-generated art in the catalog. He acknowledged the criticism and lowered the price. In December 2025 he announced the app would shut down at the end of that year.
In November 2024, a sponsored review of a DJI action camera included a point-of-view shot of him driving 96 mph in a 35 mph zone, with the speedometer blurred. He removed the segment and apologized on X. Later bodycam footage showed earlier speeding and traffic violations.
Off camera
Brownlee also plays ultimate. He suits up for the New York Empire of the Ultimate Frisbee Association, which won league championships in 2019, 2022 and 2023. With New York PoNY he won the World Flying Disc Federation World Ultimate Club Championship in 2022, and he was on the U.S. mixed team that took gold at the 2025 World Games.
His reach extends well beyond New Jersey. Readers on the North Coast who have watched a review before buying a phone, a laptop or a pair of earbuds may well have come across his work.
Source: Wikipedia, “Marques Brownlee.”
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