The Helpful Hardware Man

Marques Brownlee has rewired the way people shop for gadgets-and how companies sell them. Inside the humble factory with the power to shape the $1 trillion consumer electronics industry.

- By Harry McCracken. Photographs by Mackenzie Stroh

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.