In this, the day and age of fraud and identification theft, it makes real sense to get a document shredder to destroy any personal documents containing information which may be used by thieves for a variety of fraudulent activity. The Fellowes P50CM shredder is one such device. It is ideal for home or office shredding. The shredder comes with the main head unit which contains the on / off / reverse sliding button, the mains lead and the blades. It also comes with a 17 litre mesh waste basket into which the shredded paper collects. The main head unit sits neatly onto the basket and one very good point is the head unit has a cut out switch, so remove the head unit from the basket exposing the blades and the device will stop working. The approximate size of the shredder is Size (W)30.5cm (H)38cm (D)18.5cm which means it can fit neatly under a desk.

The P50CM shredder has a 5 sheet capacity and blade cut of 3.9 x 48mm using a cross cut style. This is recognized as one of the most affective cutting styles in the shredding industry as the paper is shredded into fine pieces of paper as opposed to long strips which are produced when the cutter is a strip cutter. The width of the mouth of the shredder is 230mm wide, this is more than big enough to comfortably take A4 sized paper, anything bigger and you can simply fold and place into the shredder. The shredder also takes staples, this is very useful as it means you do not need to remove staples from documents before shredding, this saves you time.

Once switched on, the shredder has an auto-start/stop feature, that is simply place the paper into the mouth of the shredder and the shredder automatically starts working and pulls the paper into the blades. Once the page has been shredded, the blades continue for a few seconds before coming to a rest. It also has a reverse feature, if there is too much paper in the blades and they get jammed, switch the switch to reverse and the motor reverses and attempts to push the paper back, this always seems to clear any jam, virtually straight away you put the switch into forward mode and the paper soon gets mashed.

I have owned this particular shredder for about 18 months now and it is still going strong. I would class myself as a medium use shredder on average shredding about 20 to 40 times a week. It will shred 5 sheets at anyone time as stated, though this does seem to be a bit much. The motor, although it does work, seems to struggle and get hot quicker. I find it is better to feed a maximum of 3 sheets in at anyone time when shredding a pile of paper. The motor doesn't struggle as much and the paper goes through the machine quicker. Fellowes also recommend a maximum of 100 sheets per session, again I would say this is less if regularly shredding 5 sheets, as the motor soon becomes very hot, though I have shredded more than this in one sitting but again shredding less pages in one pass.

The mesh basket collates the shredded paper and is easy to empty, though as expected the shredder also creates a fine paper dust so after a few goes there is paper dust in the basket which can get into the air when emptying causing a sneezing fit.

I picked this shredder up for approximately £35, though have since seen it costing anything from £30 - £55 so do look around before buying one.

Overall this is an excellent shredder, treat it right and it will last. My only negative comment is that is can seem a little noisy at times, though to be fair I have not had another shredder to compare it to. I would definitely buy another Fellowes shredder when this one finally bites the dust!