JerryRigEverything

Who Is JerryRigEverything?

Zack Nelson — JerryRigEverything — invented a YouTube format so specific and so replicable that it became an industry standard: the scratch, burn, and bend test for smartphones. His durability assessment videos have accumulated over 9 million subscribers and billions of views, and more importantly, they have had real-world influence on how smartphone manufacturers design products. Engineers at Samsung, Apple, and Google have publicly acknowledged designing devices to pass Zack's tests — making him one of the few YouTube creators to demonstrably alter the product decisions of the world's largest technology companies.^[1]

JerryRigEverything's commercial model is as distinctive as his content format. Because his audience watches specifically to understand hardware durability, his sponsorships from repair tool companies, phone case manufacturers, and screen protector brands are among the most directly relevant creator-product alignments in tech YouTube. His audience is not browsing entertainment — they are seeking hardware intelligence, and his brand partners are exactly who you would recommend to someone with a broken phone.

Early Life & Background

Zack Nelson was born on October 23, 1987, in Riverton, Utah. He worked in the smartphone repair industry before launching his YouTube channel in 2015, a background that gave him genuine technical knowledge of device internals rather than the surface-level product familiarity of most tech reviewers. His repair experience meant he could open any phone and understand what he was looking at — and his audience quickly recognized that the teardown content came from someone with practical rather than theoretical expertise.^[2]

He married his YouTube collaborator Cambry Kaylor, who became a regular presence in his content and later the subject of a separate channel documenting her experience as an adaptive athlete. The partnership added a personal dimension to what might otherwise have been a dry technical channel and introduced his audience to topics beyond hardware — disability, adaptive sports, and family life — that expanded his audience demographic without alienating the core tech viewership.

The Durability Test Standard

Nelson's testing methodology became standardized across the industry almost by accident. He began using Mohs hardness picks — geological testing tools — to scratch phone screens at standardized hardness levels, then held a lighter flame against the screen, then tried to bend the device. The sequence was repeatable, comparable across different devices, and yielded definitive results. No manufacturer could game the test by polishing their press release language; the pick either scratched at level 6 or it didn't.^[3]

When manufacturers began designing devices specifically to perform well on the JerryRigEverything test, it transformed the format from entertainment into genuine consumer advocacy. The Gorilla Glass specification improvements cited in subsequent generations of phone releases directly referenced performance in durability tests of the type Nelson standardized. A single YouTube channel changed what materials engineers were asked to achieve.

Cambry & Family Content

His wife Cambry Kaylor is a below-the-knee amputee and competitive athlete who has been featured in JerryRigEverything videos and eventually launched her own channel. Their content together — documenting prosthetic technology, adaptive sports, and the practical engineering of disability accommodations — uses the same technical curiosity lens that drives the durability test format but applies it to human rather than device hardware. The crossover attracted audiences who discovered the channel through Cambry's content and stayed for the tech reviews, broadening a demographic that might otherwise have remained narrow.^[4]

Brand Deals & Durability-Adjacent Sponsorships

JerryRigEverything's sponsorship ecosystem is unusually coherent because the audience's intent is unambiguous: people watching a phone durability test are either researching a purchase, troubleshooting a damaged device, or curious about materials science. All three segments respond to the same category of sponsor — Dbrand (device protection), iFixit (repair tools), and phone case brands. His estimated integrated rate at 9M subscribers is $200K–$400K per video, but the purchase-intent premium his audience carries means conversion rates justify placements that raw subscriber math would undervalue. For full benchmarks on hardware creator rates, see our YouTube influencer pricing guide.

His brand deal positioning is unusual in that he can credibly claim consumer advocacy credentials — his testing methodology has demonstrably influenced manufacturer decisions, giving his endorsements more weight than typical creator promotions. A product that survives JerryRigEverything's tests and is then sponsored by his channel carries a dual signal: it passed an objective test AND he chose to promote it. Compare rates across tech creator tiers in our celebrity influencer pricing breakdown.

Related Creators

JerryRigEverything operates in the consumer tech YouTube space alongside several other creators covered here. MKBHD covers the same smartphone launches with a broader review format — the two channels often cover the same device from complementary angles (design and software vs. physical durability). Unbox Therapy's first-reaction format pairs naturally with JerryRigEverything's long-term durability perspective. Linus Tech Tips represents the PC hardware dimension of the same technically literate audience, with an overlap in the subset of viewers who want to understand how their devices work at a component level.

Sources

1. 1 The Verge — The YouTube Channel That Changed How Smartphones Are Built (2020)
2. 2 Android Authority — JerryRigEverything: The Man Behind the Bend Tests (2019)
3. 3 WIRED — How JerryRigEverything's Tests Became Industry Benchmarks (2021)
4. 4 Forbes — The Creator Economy's Unexpected Disability Advocates (2022)

Frequently Asked Questions

JerryRigEverything — Official Social Media & Links

All accounts below are the verified official profiles for JerryRigEverything. Follower counts are approximate and updated periodically.