Tesco Value Paper Shredder & Bin > Reviews (7)

Every house needs a shredder, but it’s one of those things that I hate spending money on – I mean it isn’t very glamorous is it?! So when I saw this one in Tesco for less than £8, I snapped it up. I have been pretty happy with it ever since, well as happy as you can be with a paper shredder.

The shredder is very easy to put together. The mechanism sits on top of the seven litre collection bucket. There is a little dent in the bucket where the wire goes when it has been put together so that it fits together nicely – it’s a nice little touch that you don’t usually get from cheap products.

There are three settings on the machine; on, auto and reverse. We leave the machine on auto because it is the easiest setting as it automatically starts shredding when you put any paper in the top of it and it stops as soon as it has finished shredding. The reverse button is quite handy too for when something gets jammed in the shredder you can just use this setting to unblock the machine.

It recommends that you only shred five sheets in the machine at once, but I never even do that many. I find it shreds best when you only put about three sheets in at once. It will do five, but I find that it doesn’t shred the inner sheets as well. If I’m shredding envelopes or folded pieces of paper I tend to only do one at once. It is quite a sturdy machine with sharp cutting blades, but I’m not sure it would stand up to heavy duty use.

It isn’t a cross shredder so it shreds paper into strips rather than smaller pieces, but the blades are fairly close together, so the strips are pretty thin.

It is pretty quick – surprisingly so for a cheap basic shredder and only takes a couple of seconds to do each piece which is good for if you are doing a lot of shredding at once (like I do when I’ve left it to build up!). It wouldn’t be any good though for more than home office use because I just don’t think it would stand up to long periods of continuous use. It is also quite noisy as well. It sounds a bit like a motorbike setting off!

The machine is very basic looking but that is not necessarily a bad thing in this case. It is sort of a beige grey colour and will fit in nicely in any office. It sits nicely under a desk as it isn’t too big or bulky. The ten litre bucket is more than big enough for home office use – I find that I only have to empty it once a month or so because it holds quite a lot of paper.

Overall I would definitely recommend the Tesco Value shredder for home office use. It is cheap and cheerful, inoffensive and fit for purpose.