Marques Brownlee
Creator & Host, MKBHD. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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Marques Brownlee produces consumer electronics and technology reviews across YouTube, where his MKBHD channels have amassed tens of millions of subscribers and billions of views. He also hosts the technology podcast Waveform and has conducted high-profile interviews with prominent tech industry leaders including Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Satya Nadella.
Everything Marques Brownlee said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Brownlee: New Creators Cannot Replicate His 2009 Organic YouTube Playbook Today
“So the hard answer to your question is, I don't think you can do it the way I did, the way I started in 2009. I don't think you can do it that way anymore.”
Brownlee: Engine sound is overrated for the vast majority of car buyers
“I think a lot of people overrate how much sound matters. Like, in the high-end car market, everyone cares how their car sounds. But for, you know, 90% of people who are just like... When I hit the pedal, I want to hear it working for me. Like, that's a common,…”
Brownlee: Legacy automakers' EV efforts show how far ahead Tesla is
“The more like those big companies think about answering those questions, like Ford and like Chevy and those big guys. Yeah. The more you realize how, how far ahead Tesla is, but how, how much How, how far there is to go to actually make EVs useful for most peo…”
Brownlee: Competitor phone cameras lag far behind the Google Pixel
“I'm reviewing a lot of phones right now whose cameras are just not close to the Pixel's camera in particular, and I know they could get closer. I know they could put a little more into that, but they don't, and that's their own choice and their own priority.”
Brownlee: Product Review YouTubers Face Less Pressure to Be Entertainers
“Often the subject of the video is the person. And so in order for it to be an interesting video, the person and the thing that they're doing has to constantly be interesting, and for me, I've been lucky enough that I do product videos, so a lot of other produc…”
Brownlee: Unbiased Authenticity is the Most Important Component of Tech Reviews
“And I guess the other thing I found out pretty early in this job is that the authenticity and the unbiased nature of my reviews is the most important part of it.
Yeah.
And that felt like it would be pretty compromised if suddenly I could only, you know, speak …”
Brownlee: MKBHD Avoids Brand Sponsorships From Companies Whose Products They Review
“Normally we don't do sponsored integrations from companies whose products we also review, and that was a choice that we made pretty early, but we have actually had like that happen with these sort of fringe overlaps.”
Brownlee: MKBHD Rejects 99% of Brand Sponsorship and Partnership Offers
“We say no to 99% of the things that we get offered. Like, actually, 99%.”
Brownlee: MKBHD's Production Pressure is Internal, Not Driven by YouTube Algorithms
“I think it's funny because it's not like the Like, pressure to make new stuff comes from, like, the algorithm or some, like, hamster wheel where everything will die if we don't make another episode. Yeah. It kind of comes internally from ourselves.”
Brownlee: Half of Top Creators at 2022 Summit Blew Up via Shorts
“I was just at the twenty-twenty-two creator summit, and probably half the room was faces I'd never seen before, because out of nowhere YouTube Shorts came along, and there are people who are just making short form vertical videos, 62nd videos, and just blowing…”
Brownlee: MKBHD grew steadily over 1,000 videos without a viral inflection point
“No, I get asked that a lot about like, you know, can I point to a certain video or date or month or something? Like what happened to go from like nothing to where it is now? But it's, I've, I, from to this day, I look back and it's mainly just like a, you can …”
Brownlee: LG's touchless hand gesture controls are a gimmick
“This came up recently because I did a video with an LG phone that came out. Mm-hmm. Has this feature where you wave your hand over it and do these gestures to open up apps and things like that. It's called the G-A. Okay. And like, on the surface, like, this is…”
Brownlee: Average phone buyers do not care about high-end display resolution
“Like, I'm a, I love high resolution, really nice screens. And you can hand me a phone with a 1440 P AMOLED great display, and you could hand me a phone with a 1080 P LCD display, and I'd look and I'd immediately want the better one. But to an average person, a…”
Brownlee: Smartphone industry will not reach a permanent innovation plateau
“I don't know what that next trend is, but I feel like because of, I've observed these cycles over the past couple years it doesn't seem likely that it's just gonna, we're gonna get this end product of, like, the perfect phone.”
Brownlee: Gen-1 folding phones are unrefined proofs of concept
“Generation one folding phones are like, alright, proof of concept, like, you can technically fold it, but there's a big ugly crease in the middle on these bezels are huge, and, you know, it's not really It doesn't seem that useful yet.”
Brownlee: VR works great for gaming but is puzzling for video production
“It's awesome for games. I love it for games. I love it for other stuff, but for video, it's been sort of a head scratcher.”
Brownlee: RED cameras have poor autofocus because cinema workflows use manual focus
“The camera, essentially, it has a really, really poor autofocus system, but it's a red camera, and no one uses autofocus for red cameras, so they don't really work on it, so it's not good. So it's manual focus all the time”
Brownlee: The iPad Pro stands alone in the $1,300 tablet category
“IPad was already so far ahead in tablets. And then iPad pro took a massive step forward versus the last iPad. Like this is obscene how, how much, like there is no other. 1300 dollar tablet I would even consider. Like that's alone in its category, which is real…”
Brownlee: Publishing content at 95% is better than delaying for 99%
“And if it's 95% there and it's done, that's better than 99% there and still working on it.”
Brownlee breaks down the three categories of YouTube video comments
“I can also separate the comments section into kind of three categories. Hour one of upload, which is, like, useless. It's mainly just people saying either first or reacting to the title and thumbnail and not actually watching the video, or just, like, getting …”
Brownlee: Modern consumer tech has advanced so even low-end devices work well
“Nothing really sucks anymore, you know, like the tech we use, even at the lower end, Just kind of works pretty well.”
Brownlee: YouTube ads are 50% of revenue, while sponsors are 20%
“I'm still at a point where like the YouTube ads are probably 40, 40 to 50%. The, I don't do a whole lot of sponsored stuff. If I did, that number would be much higher, but I think right now sponsored stuff is probably about 20%. So, 4020, and then affiliate st…”
Brownlee: The Profession of 'YouTuber' Did Not Exist in 2009
“There was no such thing as a YouTuber in 2009.”
The other half of the tape: Marques Brownlee's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 2 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Guy Raz 1Craig Cannon 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
the Y Combinator Startup Podcast 1
How I Built This 1
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Marques's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Y COMBINATORLEDGER | Creator & Host, MKBHD | 1 | 20 | — | full record on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast → |
| HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Creator & Host, MKBHD | 1 | 17 | — | full record on How I Built This → |