Matthew S. Smith

Experience

A veteran consumer technology journalist and general-purpose hardware geek, Matthew S. Smith has covered the industry since 2007.

Matthew began his career writing about PC hardware for several sites, including PC Perspective, TechHive, and MakeUseOf. Over the past decade, his expertise has expanded to smartphones, gaming, wearables, and even electric bikes.

In addition to attending the Consumer Electronics Show every year since 2009, Matthew has covered industry-insider events like E3, Microsoft Build, and Oculus Connect. He earned behind-the-scenes access to Microsoft, Intel, AMD, and Lenovo, visiting each company campus. This exclusive access led to features covering Microsoft's futuristic programming language for quantum computers, Intel's efforts to miniaturize the home PC, and Lenovo's insanely thorough ThinkPad durability testing center.

As Lead Editor of Reviews at Digital Trends, he guided the site's evaluation of consumer technology across all product categories. Matthew wrote the style guide, determined evaluation and scoring criteria, and edited hundreds of his reviews. His team reviewed over 1,000 devices each year.

My Gear

Matthew's pride and joy is a custom-built gaming PC, but he also has a Lenovo ThinkPad laptop, iPhone 7 Plus, iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, Google Pixel 3, and Motorola Moto G4. He often plays Microsoft Flight Simulator, which looks great on his Acer Nitro 34-inch ultrawide monitor, using Logitech's X56 HOTAS. A casually-hardcore gamer, Matthew owns an Xbox Series X, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Wii U, Nintendo GameCube, Sega Genesis Mini, and Nintendo SNES Mini. He plays console games and enjoys movies on a classic 55-inch Panasonic VT60 plasma HDTV.

He also built a solar-powered home office that runs off a single 200-watt solar panel. It includes an Intel NUC desktop and a 24-inch Viewsonic USB-C hub monitor.

Education

Matthew has two Bachelor's degrees from Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin: one in Creative Writing, and one in English Literature.

A Message from Matthew S. Smith

I consider myself a card-carrying hardware geek. What does that mean? It means I care about whether my next CPU is built on a 14-nanometer or 7-nanometer node. It means I worry whether a fast PCIe 3.0 solid state drive is sufficient for future-proofing. And it means I always wish my monitor had more pixels. But don't worry. I'm not here to bore you. My job is to provide you this expertise as quickly as possible, so you can solve your problems and get on with your day. That's exactly what I intend to do.

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