Pros & Cons
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- Fast rated and tested speeds.
- Exceeds rated paper capacity.
- Shreds CDs, paper clips, staples, and credit cards, as well as paper.
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- Large and tall.
- Can shred continuously for only 8 minutes.
- Requires a relatively long cooling-down period.
- Shredding cards can be tricky.
The Staples 16-Sheet High-Speed Cross-Cut Shredder ($199.99) offers a good balance of input capacity, speed, and basket size for its price, as well as relatively quiet for paper shredding. It can only shred for a relatively short time before having to take a long break, but for short shredding sessions of many pages, it does well.
The 16-Sheet High-Speed Cross-Cut Shredder measures 26.1 by 12.7 by 17.2 inches (HWD). The chassis is black, and has an oval top with a 9-inch-wide feed slot. Controls, located just below the feed slot, are minimal; there's just a rocker switch that can be switched from Off to On or Reverse, with a bright blue LED that lights up when it's on.
CDs and plastic credit or ID cards are fed through the paper slot. It will easily grab a CD, but shredding plastic cards is trickier. You may have to poke a card downward into the slot for a while until you find the right spot for the shredder to grab it.
View All As you'd figure from its name, the shredder has a rated capacity of 16 sheets. In my testing, it did a little better than that, shredding up to 20 at once. It jammed when I loaded it with 22 sheets. Its speed is rated at a rapid 14.5 feet per minute, and I timed it at 14.7. It can shred continuously for 8 minutes, followed by a relatively long 40-minute cool-down period. It's fast enough, and has a large enough capacity, to churn through nearly 2,000 sheets in those 8 minutes—though you may have to empty the bin several times during that run.
With this cross-cut shredder, paper is cut into small strips measuring about 1.3 by 0.19 inches, a small enough size to be reasonably secure for most personal and business use. The basket holds 7.6 gallons, generous for the shredder's price.
In addition to paper, it can shred paper clips, staples, CDs, and credit cards. Paper shredding is quiet enough, though as is the case with most shredders—a notable exception being the Swingline Stack-and-Shred 300X Hands Free Shredder—shredding CDs is very noisy.
Because of its long cooling-down period (40 minutes), five times as long as it can continuously shred, the Staples 16-Sheet High-Speed Cross-Cut Shredder isn't ideal for businesses with higher-volume shredding needs. The Editors' Choice Ativa Professional Plus HDPro 2000 could churn through many thousands of sheets in one 2-hour sitting, for example. The Staples shredder's forte is in quickly shredding somewhat smaller jobs, and it's faster than the Ativa HDPro 2000 in that regard.
The Staples 16-Sheet High-Speed Cross-Cut Shredder is most suitable for a home office or a business with no more than a few employees. It also does well as a household shredder, though it's large for that purpose and may be overkill for many home users.
Final Thoughts
Staples 16-Sheet High-Speed Cross-Cut Shredder
The Staples 16-Sheet High-Speed Cross-Cut Shredder makes quick work of documents you need to dispose of, but can only shred for a relatively short period of time before it needs a long break.