Steven Shaw
Steven Shaw is a Senior Digital Writer covering tech and fitness. Steven writes how-to guides, explainers, reviews and best-of listicles covering a wide range of topics.
Steven joined What’s the Best in 2024. Before this, he wrote about fitness and tech content for various outlets, including TechRadar, Android Central, iMore, Exceptional.com, and StealthOptional.
Hobbies
When Steven isn’t writing, he spends most of his free time keeping two small children alive. This means his time for his hobbies has been severely curtailed, but he is rapidly becoming an expert on Bluey, Danger Mouse, and all things space-related.
When his children don’t require his attention, Steven enjoys keeping fit. He advocates at-home workouts, which remove as many barriers/excuses for not exercising as possible. He enjoys strength training, high-intensity interval training, and some walking, stretching, and yoga to help recovery.
If there’s any time left in the day, Steven will happily try to read a book, watch one of the myriad TV shows he is desperately trying to catch up on or play the occasional video game.
Writing
Steven graduated with an MPhil in Medieval History, specialising in ninth-century Carolingia and tenth-century Anglo-Saxon England. This clearly gave him the perfect knowledge base for a career covering technology. After stumbling into a job in the mobile phone industry, Steven dabbled in freelancing for several years before leaping into full-time writing in 2021.
Tech
Steven grew up as the nascent digital world began to mature. Consequently, he’s old enough to remember the before times, when MySpace and Bebo dominated social media and the distinctive sound of dial-up internet beeped through the air.
He grew up playing various gaming consoles and is particularly nostalgic about the Nintendo 64 era. He’ll happily argue the case for Conker’s Bad Fur Day in any gaming debate.
His previous life working in the mobile phone industry gave Steven plenty of knowledge about phones, tablets and smart tech. This was the gateway to discovering the potential of smartwatches and fitness tech and how it can be used to help improve health and fitness.
Fitness
Steven has been passionate about sports and fitness from an early age. As well as playing football and cricket, Steven regularly competed in athletics and cross-country. As he’s got older, keeping fit has remained a passion, and Steven exercises regularly in an ultimately futile attempt to keep up with his children, who are the living embodiment of high-intensity training.
Steven’s areas of expertise:
• Fitness tech, including smartwatches, fitness trackers and smart scales
• Mobile phones, both Android and Apple
• Games consoles
• Books
• Anglo-Saxon history
Steven’s top buying tips for readers are:
“Whatever you’re considering buying, look for the best product to meet your needs. Don’t be seduced by the brand name or pay extra for features you won’t use. But equally, don’t be afraid to pay more to get the best product for you. Sometimes, a premium brand is worth the extra because it offers added features that will add value or a more polished experience for you as the user. But always start by working out the essential features for you, and go from there.”
“Look out for any hidden costs that may be associated with products you are interested in. Increasingly, businesses are leaning into subscription-based business models. Some will offer extra features for an optional premium, while others will hide valuable data behind a subscription. As a result, a device that has a cheap upfront cost may work out more expensive in the long run if you have to pay extra to access all those features. Make sure you know what you’re getting before making that buying decision.”
