Marques Brownlee says ‘we failed on the price’ with Panels

Marques Brownlee published a video on Friday addressing the criticisms around Panels, his new wallpaper app, saying that he and the team "failed on the price front" at launch. The app received an outpour of criticism from fans, both on the MKBHD YouTube channel and across social platforms. Discussing the app, Brownlee admitted it needed work. "If I was reviewing this app, I would not have been very nice," he said.

One of the primary criticisms of the app was that the premium "Panels Plus" subscription cost $11.99 per month or $49.99 per year to remove ads and have full access to the available collections of wallpapers. To make things better, Brownlee and the team have been improving the free experience by getting rid of in-feed ads, making all wallpapers that aren't part of a collection available in 1080p for free with no ads, and letting people get a full-resolution wallpaper by watching one 30-second ad.

As for the subscription's price, "even though subscriptions are incredibly unpopular, we wanted to at least offer one that made sense for the wallpaper power user... for how few of you actually exist," Brownlee says. There's now a new, more affordable Panels Plus "Standard" tier that costs $1.99 per month with no ads on individual wallpapers. The higher "Unlimited" tier, which is still at that $11.99 per month / $49.99 per year price, adds full access to collections and early access to new wallpapers.

Brownlee also touches on concerns about what the app was tracking based on the long list that had been included in the App Privacy section of the App Store. "Another blunder by us," Brownlee says. "This was way too broad." Brownlee says that the list actually was "a list of things that you as a developer provide to the App Store for things that the app may, at some point, ask just to tell people ahead of time, just to be safe, and we just checked way too many boxes."

Brownlee says that most of the boxes were checked because of "broad suggestions" from the app's ad service, AdMob. "To be clear, I do not want your data," he says. He also points out that you can use the app and get wallpapers without making an account.

In the full video, which is more than 15 minutes long, Brownlee discusses other aspects of the app, too, like that there will be weekly drops on Fridays with new art and that he can "personally promise" that the app won't be filled with AI-generated slop.

The Panels app launched the same day as MKBHD's iPhone 16 review in September.