It's his core philosophy:
"Never. Ever. Buy a tech product based on the promise of future software updates."
"Never. Ever. Buy a tech product based on the promise of future software updates."
I've seen interesting products, and either been curious or ready to buy. Unfortunately, the only available information to me is the marketing.
Seriously, look on amazon. You can see pictures of the product, read the description, and read the reviews. this leads to 2/3 of the information being by the marketing team, and quite possibly much of the final 1/3, the reviews.
Being able to view a video of the product by someone (anyone!) on youtube gives you a chance of critical information you need for a decision.
Who cares if he's lackluster. If he even in passing gives you an idea of what the product might actually be like, you've been helped.
By the way, even consumer reports, formerly the gold standard in unbiased reviews is part of the gravy train. When they switched from the magazine to online, they acted like a funnel to purchases. sigh.
"The entertainment you would watch" would probably amount to nothing and you probably wouldn't even finish the video, because it would be too boring.
To sum this one up:
Tell me you can't tell the difference between an influencer and a reviewer without telling me you can't tell the difference between an influencer and a reviewer. The bar is really low with respect to quality (not production, but content) these days.
From a recent article [0]: "The 30-year-old YouTube kingpin makes money from sponsorship deals with brands, merchandise sales, and a whole lot of ad revenue from YouTube."
Where do you draw the line between his format and his sponsorships? And how do you know that he's "reviewing" without monetary bias? As an example he put out this [1] video with Buick a few years ago. Let's try to be honest for a second - he wouldn't be caught dead driving that car unless Buick paid him to. And that is my point. There's no boundary between his "reviews" and his "ads". They look, they feel and they are the same format. He's excited about this Buick, "reviewing" it on his channel, it does say that it's sponsored, but is it his actual opinion? Very doubtful. And that, right there, is the difference between a reviewer and an influencer. Is he a charlatan? Maybe not quite that far - but he is being dishonest by making the sponsor video in, basically, the same format as anything else he does. Does he have relevant points? Sure - but there are other reviewers that have much deeper knowledge of the reviewed product. Case in point is his car reviews - he's not a true car enthusiast. His car "review" videos clearly reflect that when you compare it to someone who knows the car market in-depth (there are a lot of great car reviewers on YouTube, MKBHD isn't one of them). Is it good enough? For most people, probably. But again - I don't trust anyone to do a full spot on a car that's not even close to being on his want-to-have list and then expect him to be unbiased when "reviewing" a competitor. He puts out ads for his own brand, and anyone willing to pay him. He's an influencer. And now, he's hocking wallets that are $125+ [2][3].
[0] https://fortune.com/2024/02/22/marques-brownlee-youtube-at-a... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfC8Y66tR6o [2] https://ridge.com/collections/mkbhd [3] https://ridge.com/pages/mkbhd-announcement
He doesn't hold a candle to people like Dave2D or Hardware Unboxed, the latter of which has extremely thorough testing for every single one of the products they review. MKBHD is often inaccurate about many things and certainly not exhaustive in his reviews like other reviewers are. His channel can be better classified as infotainment, much like Unbox Therapy and (for certain of their videos) Linus Tech Tips are.