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Paper Shredders Reviews
Updated December 2007
We found the best paper shredder review at The Wall Street Journal. Charles Passy puts five cross-cut shredders to the test, enlisting the help of Richard Rampell, head of a top accounting firm in Palm Beach, Florida, to test shredders. They pushed each machine to its advertised limit on paper and threw in staples, paper clips and CDs. Which? magazine, the British equivalent of Consumer Reports, evaluates 18 different shredders, but most aren't available in the U.S. Editors also issue security ratings based on attempts to reconstruct the shredded documents. Consumer Reports has not covered shredders since 2003, but even that article is sparse. Good Housekeeping offers a brief report on paper shredders, but only four shredders are compared and results aren't very detailed. We also reviewed owner-written reviews at CircuitCity.com, Target.com, Amazon.com and Epinions. These offer valuable insight, since paper shredders are best evaluated through repeated use. Some older but still valuable reviews are found in Money magazine and The Seattle Times. In Money's shredder review, five cross-cut paper shredders are put through the paces; each shredder's level of security is measured by a firm specializing in the reassembly of documents. At Amazon.com and other user-review sites, paper shredders can be a touchy topic, and even shredders that rate highly overall receive at least some complaints for overheating, breakdowns and paper jams. Although we found good reviews for other Fellowes paper shredders, the Fellowes P70M crosscut shredder (*est. $50) receives low scores from most of the two dozen owners at Amazon.com. Complaints mainly focus on paper jams and overheating. Its plastic gears can break. In general, shredders that use plastic gears instead of metal receive lower scores. Although the Royal AG10X (*est. $40) touts metal gears, the spacers between the blades are plastic, and several owners report that these can break. Many users say that manufacturers'
stated sheet capacity is misleading. You'll see paper shredders boasting the
ability to shred eight or ten sheets at once. However, this specification
must be taken with a grain of salt. Most standard office paper is on the heavy
side, so a paper shredder rated to shred six pages at once might realistically
be capable of shredding three sheets or less of standard paper. A good rule
of thumb is to expect half the paper-handling capacity that's stated on the
paper shredder. For cheap shredders, don't feed more than one page at a time,
regardless of the shredder's stated capacity.
... Continued
Our Consensus Report shows how many times products are top-ranked by reviewers included in our
We found the best reviews for the Fellowes Powershred DS1. Although the Staples EPS-1501X and Fellowes Shredmate P50CM are recommended in more than one review, both are discontinued. To identify other good shredders, we looked to owner-written reviews at Amazon.com, CircuitCity.com, Target.com and Epinions. The Powershred P-57Cs and heavier duty Powershred SB-97Cs, for example, both outscore others in their class in owner reviews. The Staples MAILMATE Junk Mail Shredder is a replacement model for the Staples EPS-1501X. With more than 600 owner-written reviews at Staples, it scores well in its budget price range. Advertisement
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Paper Shredders Reviews |
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© 2008 ConsumerSearch, Inc. A service from 
, a part of The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.
ConsumerSearch and ConsumerSearch.com are registered trademarks of ConsumerSearch, Inc. Other trademarks or service marks on this site are the property of their respective owners. ConsumerSearch is not sponsored by any source reviewed, and we accept no consideration or payment for including, excluding, or ranking any reviews, products or services in our reports.
* Pricing information is approximate as of the time this report was written and is based on observed market selling prices and/or list prices. Actual selling prices may differ.
