Staples Medium Duty Cross Cut Shredder SPL-710SH Review

A paper shredder is essential in the days of identity theft and dumpster divers trying to steal your information and get your credit card and social security information. In the age of information, any information gathered from your garbage or elsewhere could be the information that give thieves access to countless lines of credit or information about you or your family.The Staples Medium Duty SPL-710SH paper shredder does a pretty good job for all your house-hold needs, although I wouldn't recommend it for an office.

The first thing you will notice about the Staples Medium Duty SPL-710SH shredder is its design. It is a little stylish for a paper shredder with it's silver top and black bin. It is rather top heavy, but most shredders are. The shredder cuts up to ten sheets of paper at a time. The 5.7 gallon bin holds a ton of paper, for instance in my house-hold it's only really used to shred mail, and it only has to be emptied about once every two or so weeks. The problem with this thing though, is it will over-heat if you use it to frequently, which is why I would not recommend it for offices or heavy-duty shredding, hence the name "Medium-Duty".

An interesting thing about the Staples Medium Duty SPL-710SH shredder is that it does not just shred paper, it will also shred your credit cards and CDs and even has a separate slot for CDs and credit cards. This is one of my favorite features about this particular unit and one of the reasons I picked it over cheaper units. The price was about $99.99 for the shredder.

Another feature is that it comes with a "safety handle" when this safety handle is up, the power shuts off automatically and it also covers the blades, so if you happen to shred the wrong thing just lift up the handle and it can be stopped right then. The cross cut means that it cuts across the page rather then down the page, which makes it harder to piece back together documents, if not impossible.

In conclusion, the Staples Medium Duty SPL-710SH is an effective shredder for your house-hold, and any shredder is a good investment as it totally destroys any private information completely without any hope of ever piecing it back together. I would not recommend it for your office, as it does have a tendency to over-heat if over-used. The Staples Heavy Duty Shredder is probably what you want for an office, although the Medium Duty one may work in a small office setting. It has been very durable in the year that I have owned it, and I'm pleased with how it worked out for me.