Marques Brownlee is a known American YouTube artist who became popular for his videos which are entirely focused on technology and new tech devices.
His channel is called MKBHD. The name is made from the initials of his name which is Marques Keith Brownlee. The HD in the name of the channel stands for high-definition which advertises the tech side of his channel and what are his videos about.
There were a lot of guessing about what the “K” stands for (some even claimed that it stands for Kumar) but it was revealed that Keith is also his father’s name.
In 2018, he proudly received The Shorty Award in “Creator of the Decade” category which is not a small accomplishment.
Early years
He grew up in a town named Maplewood which is settled in the New Jersey County. He has spent most of his time with his sister and friends from the neighbourhood.
Marques said that his childhood was very interesting and that he had learnt many from his previous experiences.
He was a student at Columbia High School and he was involved in the studies at Stevens Institute of Technology where he graduated in 2015. His fields of graduation were business and information technologies.
His father is also employed in similar technology and programming area of expertise so Marques was surrounded by computers and various gadgets from his early age.
His first videos were all made in his flat but today he works in his own studio in New Jersey where he uses only the best tech equipment to get the best quality in his videos .
He had to work his way up so he could buy all of the expensive and fancy equipment he uses nowadays.
Career development
Marques Brownlee joined YouTube with his channel in the spring of 2008 but the first technology video that he uploaded was after a few months, at the beginning of 2009.
He was still a high school at this time and he made reviews about products that he has bought himself and tried out. Basically he talked about pros and cons of the tech item he has tried and he always told the truth.
Hundreds of videos he uploaded when he just opened his channel were tutorials about hardware and all followed freeware that could be found. He wanted to share his knowledge with people and let them know that they could learn various things over the internet.
Since his popularity started to grow rapidly, many different tech companies started to offer business deals. They all wanted him to demonstrate their merchanise and give reviews to their tech items.
He agreed but he still only reviewed products that he wanted to review and which were interested to his audience. He doesn’t want to promote various things just because of money because he likes to stay loyal to his fans.
He gained great popularity by the fact that he always responded to his viewers and answered their questions. This made him and his viewers feel a special bond together and therefore they often see each other as friends rather than as a creator and fans.
He is best known for his great knowledge in area of smartphones and he uploads his videos approximately once a week. It may seem like a long period of time but actually he needs a few days to try out the gadget he will be writing about.
Until today he uploaded over 1,000 videos and they are all watched in thousands of views.
Following that, a lot of his reviews made their way to other review sites (of course with his approval), because his opinion was so important that he had the power to improve or decrease a sales of a project just by giving it a positive/negative review. For example, “LG G Flex” video brought him international recognition.
In 2013 he had an interview with Dennis Woodside who is one of the Motorola’s CEO. This interview marked Marques as one of the most influental people in the tech field because people ranked this high gave interviews only to people who seemed important to them.
In 2014 he did an interview with Evan Blass known as evleaks who is a known mobile reporter and reviewer for mobile phones.
Some of his videos were shown on other sites such as Forbes Tech or HuffPost Tech.
One of his videos appeared on NBC News and in several magazines all over the globe.
His review of iPhone 6 also gained huge atrention and made over 7 million views on his YouTube channel.
In 2015 he had an interview with Kobe Bryant who is a world famous professional NBA basketball player and technology enthusiast and the video was titled “Talking Tech with Kobe Bryant!”
Next year he interviewed Craig Federighi. He is the vice president of Apple and the main theme of the interview was the Apple’s release of MacBook Pro.
In 2014 he camw up with an idea of making a video series called “Smartphone Award” where he would share information and chooses best phones in chosen categories.
Marques even ordered real awards (like a trophy) to be made for the winners and he sends them to companies of the phones that reached No.1 in the categories of his choice.
He has sent the awards to Samsung, Essential and Razer and the companies were pleased to get the awards.
He has surpassed the number of six million subscribers and his channel garnered almost a billion video views.
He is so excellent with his technology reviews that a known Google employee and an important person in internet business called Vic Gundotra called him an astonishing tech reviewer.
Andrew Manganelli, his friend from the frisbee team, joined his team as an employee in 2017 and he helps Marques with the production, logistics and everything connected to managment.
Personal life
He owns a Tesla Model SP100d and sometimes you can see it on his videos. It seem that he is tech geek in cars too. He really loves electric cars.
He is a very passionate golfer and he often practises it. He started playing golf as a teenager.
A very interesting information about him is that he is a professional frisbee player and he played for Philadelphia Phoenix team and he played professionally for Golden State Ultimate.
Today he is a player at frisbee club called New York Rumble. He started playing frisbee in school and it became more serious through the years.
His favorite music is house music and he is a big fan of Wolfgang Gartner.
He says that he would love to one day visit Europe and travel around because he wants to see all of the cultures of the world.
Quick summary
Full name: Marques Keith Brownlee
Date of birth: December 3, 1993
Birthplace: Maplewood, New Jersey, United States
Age: 25
Profession: YouTuber,
Height: 191 cm
Weight: 72 kgs
Net Worth: $2 million
