If you want to be environmentally friendly where I live and recycle your paper then you have to leave it out in an open recycling container and not only that anyone who wants to try and obtain sensitive documents also knows what day it will be left out as well therefore it is essential to have a shredder in order to dispose of things like credit card bills. Not only that it is important to have a shredder that has a diamond cutting action as well as the cheaper versions that cut in strips are not as secure because it is easier to reassemble the pieces.

I paid £33.99 for this shredder when it was on sale, it is light weight and easy to move about. I would say that it is ideal for the average family or someone who works from home and has a decent amount of material they want to shred. It is classified as a level 3 shredder which means it is a mid scale shredder as the range goes up to 6. The diamond cross cutting edges means that you get very fine cuts of paper, like a mass of confetti, lots of little diamond shaped pieces of paper which means that financial information and address material is safely destroyed.

The blades are very strong and while it struggles a bit I have also used it to cut up an old credit card. It is also a pretty quiet shredder, certainly not as noisy as the one it replaced. There is a sort of drone as the paper feeds into the shredder and then a sort of burst of energy as the paper finally disappears. This is not recommended to be used as a heavy duty shredder, it claims to be able to handle six sheets at a time but I have had a couple of problems when I have tried to feed in more than four, I usually feed in a maximum of three sheets at a time.

It holds 14 litres of paper which means I'm not emptying it all the time especially as the small diamond bits of paper do not take up any space as all and can be squashed down easily. The only issue with disposal is that I have to make sure that the contents are at the bottom of the recycling bin weighted down by newspaper otherwise in a wind they are strewn all over the road when they are put out

This has proven to be a good purchase and a reliable piece of equipment for the home, not the most glamorous purchase ever but a sensible one given the risk of identity theft these days.