Ever since Marques Brownlee aka MKBHD reviewed the new iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro, Panels has become the talk of the town. For those who don't know, MKBHD started the video by talking about how he has been working on a new wallpaper app for the past one year and now it is available for download.
As someone who uses apps like this Zedge And background As for free wallpapers, I was honestly excited to see a third option available, that too for both Android and iOS users. Now that phone has to be pretty, right?
But, as soon as I clicked on the panels(download) and started using it, I realized it wasn't the right wallpaper app for me. In fact, that might not be the case for most other people, given how people were expressing their frustrations in the comments of Marx's latest video. Well, turns out the app has some big problems.
View two ads on one SD wallpaper
The app interface is very simple and I liked that there are no distractions of any kind. Having selected five different artists that bring different kinds of experiences Art Once you add the styles to your lockscreen, you are immediately directed to the app's homepage. Signing in to Google is not mandatory and that's great. However, that's where the goodness ends.
As someone who relies heavily on free wallpapers, even before looking at the subscription, I jumped in there immediately. Wallpapers that don't have a premium 'Crown' attached to them are free. Standard practice. There's a catch, though. You have to “watch 2 ads to unlock SD”. Hmm, convenient.
So SD, also known as standard quality, limits you to 1080p wallpapers. After a minute of ads, you can basically download wallpapers that look like you stole them from Google Images. Since I'm used to having 4K wallpapers on my phone, the immediate drop in quality was shocking. So, what if I want the full resolution for these images?
Will MKBHD go bankrupt because this pricing is absurd?
Well, to access 4K or full-resolution wallpapers, you have to pay $50 per year (with discount). In India, I'm talking either Rs 999 per month or Rs 1,999 per year with discount, which is absolutely insane for a wallpaper app. In comparison, contemporary wallpaper apps like Zedge and Backdrops offer one-time purchase options and even monthly plans starting at $2 or $5, which is much better than Panels' $12/month subscription.
The lack of a one-time payment option is equally disappointing. Given the price of an annual subscription, I wouldn't even venture a guess at the price for a one-time payment for the app, if Marx ever decides to add it.
In Marx's exact words,
“We have a lot of great artists that we're sharing the profits with on a 50/50 ratio and there's a lot of great collections of art on there already and there's a lot more to come and we have some really big plans for this thing, so it's starting out as a wallpaper app now, I don't want to promise too much but it's only going to get better over time, which is why we're offering a subscription to support it.”
It didn’t take me “more than two weeks” to review and uninstall
So, after watching ads for about 15 minutes, only to get 15 bad wallpapers, I decided to uninstall the app. Here's another major problem. While browsing through the panel, some wallpapers it appeared to be A.I. generated.
And, I wondered, when someone asked “What’s stopping me from asking an AI to create a unique, high-quality wallpaper that no one else will have?” Marks said, “These are all created by artists who can choose whether or not to include AI in their creation process — it will be up to you how much you value the human touch.” So, you’re telling me I’ll pay a hefty sum for someone else’s AI generations, rather than asking Gemini or Copilot to create free AI-generated images themselves?
Also, on iOS, as soon as you install the app, it asks for permission to “track your activity across other companies and websites.” To be honest, a wallpaper app has no business doing that. On Android, on the other hand, you don't see such a permission window, which is weird. However, a look at the app page on the PlayStore or App Store shows just how much information the app asks for from users.
Panels are far from being rock solid
While I understand that paying for art and supporting the artist is a respectable thing to do, in today's times, Marks' approach to this initiative seems completely different. While I understand those who are willing to go all the way and pay for the app, I don't see myself doing it in my right senses.
Furthermore, it turns out that this is an old wallpaper app launched in 2021, as noted by AppleLeaker on X. So, Panels is ultimately a repackaged wallpaper app with Marx's name on it, quite literally.
As MKBHD suggested in his video (about the new iPhones), “buy it for today, not tomorrow.” Well, you can rule me out on “today” because Panels is not the app you’d expect from MKBHD or wallpaper apps in general.
I suspect that if Marks himself made a video reviewing his own app, it wouldn't have had much better luck than the Rabbit R1 or Fisher.
What do you think? What do you think of MKBHD's new panel wallpaper app? Have your say in the comments below!
