Every minute, 300 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube. Users collectively watch 5 billion videos every single day. The site is an all-purpose visual and auditory archive of the modern human experience, for better and for worse.
The ratio of trash to treasure is high; you can click through multiple clips of weird lighting, bad editing, unfunny jokes, and random screaming before you get to the best YouTube videos. So when you find a good channel with consistent content, you latch onto it and you don't let go.
We rounded up 12 of the best YouTube channels across a wide range of disciplines, from sports to food to beauty. The channels we selected consistently create quality videos, often over a period of years.
Here are our picks for the Best YouTube Channels. Happy viewing!
Binging with Babish
Subscribers: 3,827,376
Binging with Babish teaches the basics of cooking through the lens of movies and TV shows. Have you ever wanted to make the the Prison Sauce from Goodfellas? How about the Big Kahuna Burger from Pulp Fiction? There are also two seasons worth of Basics with Babish, which teaches you simpler dishes like donuts and fried rice.
Tasty
Subscribers: 12,911,580
This is efficiency at its finest. BuzzFeed’s Tasty is a food channel designed for viral consumption; you've probably seen these videos pop up on your Facebook timeline. It breaks cooking down into simple, colorful steps from a bird's eye perspective; even lengthy recipes, which will take hours of prep and cooking, can be taught in a matter of minutes.
Cinemassacre
Subscribers: 2,899,218
This is the classic standard, by which all other nostalgia channels and video game channels are judged. James Rolfe, better known as the Angry Video Game Nerd, has been making video game critiques for even longer than YouTube's existence—he helped innovate the format back in 2004. And after 15 years, Cinemassacre hasn't missed a step, retaining its potent combination of incisive and crass humor. Rolfe is also a bit of a horror film buff; his documentary-style Monster Madness videos are worth a look, too.
theRadBrad
Subscribers: 9,998,149
In a YouTube genre dominated by loud talkers and clowns (who constantly break whatever immersion the game was trying to create), theRadBrad is a down-to-earth relief. He provides straight, complete playthroughs of the most popular games, his casual commentary is easy on the ears, and he lacks the overblown theatrics of his peers. FMV Magazine called him the "King of the YouTube Walkthrough," and it's pretty evident why.
Team Coco
Subscribers: 6,660,014
Conan O'Brien has something the other late night shows and their hosts don't have: a comedic, easy rapport with his staff. Everyone from his personal assistants to the people managing his office get involved in his skits.
The Team Coco YouTube channel posts highlights from Conan's TBS show, but the on-location comedic skits are the real gold. Conan takes a student driver on a ride with Ice Cube and Kevin Hart, interviews and torments his interns, and travels to other countries and interviews the locals. From his invisible string dance to his endlessly elastic face, nothing is funnier than watching Conan be himself.
Funny Or Die
Subscribers: 2,460,239
Chappelle’s Show is never coming back. Key and Peele moved on. Mad TV is dead. And SNL was long in the tooth decades ago. The best sketch comedy show, on a pound-for-pound, consistent basis, is Funny Or Die. Founded by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, the channel has an archive that goes all the way back to 2007, and it features celebrity comedian cameos galore.
The Breakfast Club
Subscribers: 3,370,078
If you tend to sleep late and wake up around noon, you can still listen to (and watch) the best parts of the World's Most Dangerous Morning Show. Hosted by DJ Envy, Angela Yee, and Charlamagne tha God, The Breakfast Club features interviews with rappers, singers, athletes, and politicians relevant to the hip-hop community. It's where Kamala Harris, Dave Chappelle, Dame Dash, Soulja Boy, and Cardi B all have a loose, fun platform to tell their stories, and where, on occasion, shit has been known to go down.
COLORS
Subscribers: 2,820,288
Part modern art and all melody, COLORS offers unique musical performances from artists singing in different monochrome rooms. COLORS groups its artists by color—red, blue, green—as opposed to genre. The spare visuals focus our attention on the music, presented in top-notch audio quality, rather than the image, which is exactly what you want on a music channel.
Jacques Slade
Subscribers: 1,004,280
There are a lot of content creators on Sneaker YouTube, but none of them have polish, informativeness, and overall likability of Jacques Slade. Best known for his unboxings of the latest limited run sneakers, Slade films his videos in an off-white room with white furniture, giving them an Apple-esque sheen of professionalism. His tour of Michael Jordan's Chicago home has close to 15 million views; it’s any sneakerhead or basketball fan's dream come true.
Sole Collector
Subscribers: 123,241
Sole Collector, home of Full Size Run, features informative unboxings and interviews with fellow sneakerheads (including the aforementioned Jacques Slade). It celebrates the culture surrounding sneakers, not simply the sneakers themselves.
Jackie Aina
Subscribers: 2,927,442
Jackie Aina is not only a skilled makeup artist; she’s also not afraid to call the beauty industry out for its diversity problem. She gives honest reviews of products and brands, many of which are humorous in addition to being informative. Jackie’s critiques have no doubt contributed to the increased emphasis on inclusivity in makeup in recent years, and she does it all while making you laugh out loud.
Desi Perkins
Subscribers: 3,251,516
Desi Perkins is another beauty YouTuber whose appeal goes beyond her application skills. Every Halloween, she comes up with creative costumes and looks that range from beginner level to more advanced. Throughout the rest of the year, she provides helpful product reviews on not only makeup, but skincare as well. She also welcomes her viewers into her personal life, if that’s something you’re looking for.
Coach Daniel
Subscribers: 60,173
If you want to learn basketball, beyond the knowledge of a casual fan, Coach Daniel is an excellent resource. He breaks down offensive and defensive plays in a very visual way, using circles and arrows to show you how a play evolves in a matter of seconds. And it's all current; Coach Daniel uses footage from recent NBA games to explain why one team is winning, or why another team is spinning its wheels in a rut.
Dude Perfect
Subscribers: 39,214,342
Specializing in trick shots and physics stunts, Dude Perfect has acquired over 39 million subscribers by achieving the impossible. They'll toss basketballs off the roofs of building and hit nothing but net, or ricochet a ping pong ball around a room and land it in a Pringles can. It must take hundreds of unseen hours, but we only see the end result. Every successful trick is followed by a raucous—and deserved—celebration.
