Best Paper Shredder - 5 Considerations

So what is the best paper shredder? Like so many things in life, "it depends." The goal of this site is to help you choose the best for your usage, or at least a damn good one!

Like many things in life, you get what you pay for, and in general more expensive is better -- but not always. For starters, you do not want to buy too much shredder. Yes, you could buy a multi-hundred or thousand dollar commercial unit but that would be silly if you only shred a few documents a week or a month. Here are five things to consider when looking for a paper shredder.

1) Intended Usage - What and how much are you shredding? Do you need a simple home unit to shred a few pages a week like old bills and financial statements, and maybe the odd CD/DVD as well? A simple and cheap paper shredder may be all you need. Just remember that they overload and burn out easily if you exceed what they are rated for.

Or maybe you'll be shredding mass quantities, for example in an office where lots of people shred the unit? You may need a heavy duty paper shredder..

2) Volume of Shredding

We already mentioned above that volume matters, in fact it is a critical if not the most critical thing. Paper shredders lead a pretty harsh life; think about what they actually do and then think about staples, paperclips, and other things that get fed into them as well.

If you need to handle real big volume you may want to outsource it, for example using a paper shredding service or an Onsite Document Shredding provider.

For example, the law firm I rent space from had the senior partner resign and they recently moved. They had literally decades worth of documents to shred. Just moving them was probably a 24 hour project for a couple of burly men if not more.

They hired an on site service which came with a mobile truck and shredded for the better part of a week, maybe longer, not sure as I was in and out. You do not want to feed docs into a shredder for days, nor probably have an employee do it!

3) Reviews

What other's experiences are matter. We call looking at collective experience, what other's have experienced, "Best Practices" sometimes.

You can find an a lot of paper shredder consumer reviews and many models of paper shredders at Amazon. It is worth reading these reviews for the types of models you are interested in. Within a price range for certain machines, you may find most users happy or unhappy, and you may find useful comments as well.

Unfortunately there are some newer great machines with few if any reviews. Ask around, and we also try to update this site quite regularly, but Amazon is a great source of information.

4) Price

Obviously price matters a lot. If you can't afford a model, the specs and user feedback don't matter either. Fortunately there are models available in all price ranges.

5) Size

In some cases size is critical. Paper shredders range from small desktop units where you actually need to fold a standard 8.5x11 piece of paper to put them through because they are so small to floor units to much bigger commercial units.

Dig around on this site for help, and combined with other sources hopefully you'll simply and easily find a great one for you.