Which guide shredders

What makes the best shredder? More on this Top five best shredders for How we test shredders Which? Best Buy shredders. Related articles Best Buy antivirus software packages Which? Best Buy printers Best cheap ink cartridges. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share by email. Latest News In Which? How switching broadband provider can secure your smart home and save you money. Apple releases two new MacBook Pros with new and improved chips.

WhatsApp tips and tricks: seven essential features you need to try in Windows 11 now available: Is your computer compatible? How to digitise your photos: four ways to bring new life to old memories. There are many different varieties of paper shredders in a range of sizes, styles, and capabilities. In spite of this diversity, virtually all shredders can be classified in two ways.

The first relates to the shredder's intended use: Is for home, commercial, or industrial use? The main factors distinguishing these varieties their shredding capacity and speed. For example, a paper shredder intended for home use can generally only process a few sheets of paper at a time and is less likely to be able to shred more challenging items such as filled envelopes or stapled documents.

It will also probably have a shorter run time and require a longer cool-down period between each shredding session. In contrast, shredders intended for commercial or industrial use have greater volume capacity, increased shredding speed and duration, and the variance in types of items that can be shredded.

The second classification to distinguish different types of paper shredders is the type of cut they produce. Cuts typically fall into one of three categories: strip-cut , cross-cut , and micro-cut. Get code to share this infographic on your site. When it comes to purchasing a new shredder, knowing how to identify the different paper shredder types is an important starting place.

But you also need to consider more than the intended setting or type of cut. Take the following into account in order to choose a paper shredder that suits your needs. If you only shred a few pieces of paper once a week or so, then your shredder needs differ greatly from those of an organization that needs to process hundreds of sheets a day or large stacks of paper in one sitting.

When you want to empty the bin, you need to remove the shredder part, the head. Most household shredders or cheaper shredders are manufactured in this way. It is workable but not the most convenient. When you want to shred a larger pile of documents, it gets annoying to remove the top every time.

It also can make a mess when you accidentally tip over your shredder when it is full of shredded paper. The more advanced and larger shredders are equipped with a pull-out bin or removable bucket. The container collects all the paper particles, and once the bin is full, you open the door or pull-out the compartment to empty it.

This is a more professional, clean, and convenient way than the variant with the shredder on top of the bin. A larger sized bin is recommended when you want to shred daily, or you use the shredder with multiple users, for instance, in your office department. Please note that the DIN security level has a significant impact on how quickly the wastebin fills up.

A DIN P-2 shredder that shreds documents into long strips will fill up the container much faster than a DIN P-5 shredder that generates tiny particles that takes up less volume in the bin. The maximum run-time of a shredder is very important when selecting paper shredders. What does the run-time of a document shredder tell you?

Most shredders for home use can only shred for a couple of minutes. But office shredders can shred for 30 minutes straight, and the heavy-duty shredders can even shred continuously without the need of cooling down the motor. Every shredder contains a motor, and after intensive shredding, this motor can overheat. Overheating could take place within minutes or after a few hours of shredding. How long can you shred your documents uninterruptedly with your shredder?

It depends on the type of shredder, the quality of the shredder, and the security level. Most household shredders can shred between minutes continuously before a cool-down period is needed. Professional shredders for offices can run for up to 30 minutes. But there are also commercial shredders available that can run continuously without stopping to cool down. These are the real heavy-duty ones. It is important to know that the cooling down-time is much longer than the run-time for most shredders.

A basic paper shredder with a 3 minute operating time needs to cool down for 30 minutes before the shredder is ready for the next shredding session. A higher DIN security level tends to have a negative impact on the maximum run-time.

Shredding into smaller particles requires more energy and power from the motor, which causes it to overheat more quickly. How quick or productive is the shredder? To calculate the speed of a paper shredder you need to know these specifications formula by Fellowes :. You consider either the Fellowes Powershred 73Ci or the Fellowes Powershred 99Ci and you want to know which one works more efficiently.

Because the 99Ci is much faster and can run for a longer period of time. Of course, you want to shred confidential paper documents.

But some shredders also shred other items, such as:. A basic shredder can shred documents with here and there a small staple. But if you want to shred CDs and credit cards, you need to look for shredders that can do this.

More advanced shredders can shred CDs, paperclips, and plastic cards, such as credit cards or loyalty cards. These shredders can have a dedicated slot to shred these cards with. But other types of shredders just let you shred the cards in the same space you feed your confidential papers in. It is crucial for recycling to find out if the shredder comes with a separate container to hold the plastic parts. Otherwise, the plastic particles are getting mixed up with the paper shreds, which contaminates the paper.

The shredder can have a dedicated CD slot to shred the optical media. We recommend shredding only a couple of pages at a time, though, to avoid jamming and overworking the shredder.

As someone who still gets way too much mail containing personal or sensitive information, I came into this guide with a vested interest in finding the best paper shredder for my household and home office. For this guide, we consulted several experts in the security field: Paul Stephens , director of policy and advocacy for Privacy Rights Clearinghouse; cybersecurity expert John Sileo ; identity-theft and scam consultant Rob Douglas ; and Robert Siciliano , security-awareness expert and CEO of Safr.

All of them offered their advice on the importance of shredding documents and the best ways to do so. You have other ways to dispose of documents with sensitive information on them, of course. Whether you plan on shredding a pile of documents occasionally throughout the year or you shred receipts and junk mail as they come in on a daily basis, a paper shredder is the most convenient option for most households.

Micro-cut shredders can shred a letter-size page into more than 2, pieces versus or fewer pieces for a cross-cut shredder. Paper shredders are rated on a seven-step scale, from P1 to P7 , with P7 being the highest level—think top-secret stuff. A higher security rating is especially important if you need to destroy documents with highly sensitive information, such as medical or financial info. In addition to the Amazon Basics six-sheet shredder we selected as our budget pick in , we brought in six new paper shredders to test in three eight-sheet shredders and three sheet shredders.

And, wow, did we have enough paper to shred: several thousand pieces—enough to fill up at least six large laundry baskets—donated by community members who had collected bank statements, credit card offers, utility bills, tax documents, prescription papers, pay stubs, junk mail, and more dating as far back as After testing models from Fellowes, Aurora, and Bonsaii, we found that once again the Amazon Basics shredders performed the best and were the easiest to use.

For additional info, read more about how we work. So how did we end up with three recommendations for Amazon Basics models? As we do for all of our guides, we made our picks here based on extensive comparisons, research, and testing.

The three Amazon Basics shredders we recommend are pretty much variations of the same machine, just with different page capacities and in the case of the six-sheet version, a pull-up versus a pull-out bin design. The eight-sheet capacity is enough for you to shred a couple of bank or credit card statements at a time, and you can get through hundreds of papers in under 10 minutes. We threw everything we had at it—stapled sheets, folded junk mail, plastic credit cards, and data DVDs in the handy separate disc slot —and the shredder chomped through them all like a champ, producing minuscule, undecipherable bits of paper and plastic.

Conveniences such as a simple pullout bin, LED indicators, and casters make this shredder easier to use than cheaper options. When we fed the shredder a stack of 11 sheets of paper, it finally jammed, but we easily cleared it up using the forward and reverse buttons.

The shredder also outperformed its rated run time of five minutes, shredding continuously for eight minutes before the bin indicator said it was full.

That required us to empty the wastebasket before continuing, and it meant that we were never able to overtax the shredder enough to force it into a minute cool-down mode—unlike our experience with the Fellowes Powershred 8MC5 8-Sheet Micro-Cut Paper Shredder , which overheated within five minutes of continuous use.

Although this eight-sheet Amazon Basics shredder is larger and bulkier than shredders with pull-up tops, it still fits under standard-size desks, and the casters make it easy to wheel out for shredding and for emptying the bin.

The pull-out wastebasket glides out and back in easily, which in our tests made shredding less of a chore than with eight-sheet shredders that had lift-up tops. If you have data discs to destroy, you can do so without wearing down the main gears. In our testing, it worked as intended, quickly tearing discs apart into several small shards.

This shredder produces larger shreds than some other models we tested. The Fellowes Powershred 8MC5 8-Sheet Micro-Cut Paper Shredder reduced pages to the smallest bits, but it had temperature and jamming problems that negated that advantage. Shredding CDs or DVDs, as expected, made the shredder sound louder than when it was shredding plastic credit cards or paper, but its noise while shredding matched the average for the shredders we tested—about 83 decibels for CDs, 70 decibels for credit cards, and the mids for stacks of paper.

That said, jams were easy to fix, and none of the other shredders we tested had proper overload warnings. Some other shredders have additional safety features that would be nice to see on the Amazon Basics shredders.