There apparently comes a time in everyone's lives when they feel a need to start shredding - I think it was Michael McIntyre that pointed this out to me, and it seems my parents have reached that time.

Despite being fairly clueless about most forms of technology, they have decided that people even knowing your name and address will have catastrophic consequences (although isn't this all available in the phone book..?).

I decided that it was worth spending £15 on a shredder to quell their fears, so I ordered this shredder from Tesco's online site. Neither of them deal with a great amount of paperwork so I thought the five sheet limit wouldn't be a great hindrance.

The box contains two units - the mesh bin and the shredding head unit. You attach them together, very simply, and you are good to go.

The shredder operates quite quietly - I don't have a great deal of experience with them, but the one in my office is certainly noisier than this, although that can handle a great deal more in one go. It is also very safe - if you disconnect it from the basket it will power down so you can't test the toughness of your fingers.

On the downside, this struggles to live up to it's five-sheet billing, unless you store much sensitive information about yourself on tissues. The mesh basket also allows some of the smaller pieces of paper to fall out, meaning you will need to hoover around the area, especially when you pick it up to empty it. It also overheats if you use it for more than a couple of minutes, taking about ten minutes to cool back down to the level where it will function - fortunately, you can shred quite a lot in two minutes, so this won't come around often once you have down your initial "big shred".

The bits of shredded paper could potentially be big enough to retain useful information, but it would take a lot of sifting to find them, so I consider this suitable for all but hypersensitive information, which if you have any, you would probably be better of burning!

For the price, I think this is good, but if you will be a heavy user I would get a bigger capacity shredder, so you don't have to spend so much time on this menial task.