Do you have your home shelves and tables filled with unwanted paper you are scared to throw away?
You are in need of a shredder. Read on to find out how you can choose the best home office shredder for you.
What To Look For in Home Office Shredders?
The best home office shredder should provide you with at least medium security level, so you should leave strip-cut shredders out of the game. Micro-cut will give you a higher level of security, but cross-cut is faster and the blades don’t need to be oiled as much.
Choosing The Right Shredder Specifications
Depending on the volume of documents you need to destroy, you should pay attention to the shredding capacity and how much time is this shredder able to work without a break to cool down. Another important specification is the wastebasket capacity which also depends on the amount of paper waste you produce and how often are you willing to empty it. The bigger the bin is, the bigger shredding sessions you can have before needing to empty it.
Safety Comes First
Since we’re talking about home office paper shredders, that means your kids or pets can get too close to the blades, so it would be useful to consider some shredder model that have some safety features. Features like SafeSense, that automatically shuts down the shredder when it detects hands close to the shredder blades or small shredder openings in which hands can’t fit.
This article is here to help compare the performance and specifications of different models and help you to make a decision which one to get.
Best Home Office Shredders 2019
Best Safe Home Office Shredder
Fellowes Powershred W11C
This W11C made by Fellowes is one of the best home office shredders considering a lot of satisfied users. Its size (17.75” x 13.75” x 9.25”) makes it great for personal use, the medium sized trash bin has the capacity of 4.75 gallons. You can place the regular trash bag inside to collect the shredded waste, and when it’s ready to empty it you have to lift shredding unit up. Shredding unit is quite heavy but there is a plastic handle for easier emptying.
This model can accept 11 sheets of paper per single pass, even with staples attached and plastic credit cards. The paper is cut into 5/32” x 3/8” pieces really fast, achieving a medium P-4 security level.
This shredder will provide you with 5 minutes of shredding without stopping and then you will have to pause it for 20 minutes so the motor can cool down. When the shredder works longer than recommended the temperature rise can cause damage to the motor, but this shredder will be shut down before that happens.
This personal shredder is also great since it has a safety lock that will block the main commands that can be pretty useful if you use this shredder at home office and your kids or pets can wander off in your office.
Top Rated Home Office Paper Shredder For Light Use
Bonsaii DocShred C156-D
If you’re looking for a personal shredder for more light use you have to consider getting this Bonsaii C156-D model. This shredder is able to cut single CDs and credit cards and a total of 12 sheets of paper simultaneously with paper clips and staples attached.
After passing through the blades, the paper is cross-cut to the size of 1/5” x 1 24/32” to give a medium level of protection to your information. This shredder will cut for 3-5 minutes without stopping at the speed rate of 6.3 feet per minute. The motor will need 40 minutes break to cool down if you continue to use it thermal sensors will shut it down to prevent damage caused by overheating.
The dimensions of this shredder are 13.86” x 8.7” x 17.44” so you can easily place it next to your work table or even underneath. The waste bin has the capacity of 5.5 gallons and it is underneath the lift-up shredding unit that has a plastic handle to help you with lifting. Don’t worry; you won’t have to lift up the shredding unit every time you want to check if it’s full thanks to the small view window.
Switches for three main commands are placed on top of the shredding unit. It is Auto/On, Off and Reverse. Auto mode will pull the paper as soon as it’s inserted in the slot, and if the paper jams the blades you will have to switch to Reverse mode.
Best Budget Home Office Shredder
AmazonBasics 12 Sheet Paper/CD/Credit Card Shredder
When we’re talking about home office shredders we can’t leave out AmazonBasics as a producer of good but cheap paper shredders. This model is good for medium use. Regarding the user’s manual, it can take 600 sheets of paper per day and 12 sheets of paper in a single load.
This shredder will also tear up credit cards and old CDs, but it is recommended to insert it one by one. 7/32” x 2-5/32” is the size of the cross-cut fragments once they go through the set of sturdy blades. The width of the entry slot is 8.7” wide so you can shred any legal or letter sized documents without any trouble.
Continuous run time for this shredder is 5 minutes, and the necessary cool downtime is at least 30 minutes. The longer you shred, the more you will have to cool it down. In case the motor starts to overheat auto shut-off feature will shut it down to protect the motor and sensitive commands.
If you put something than paper material and plastic cards/CDs the shredder will automatically shut down. Auto mode regulates shredding operation and for paper jams, you will have to switch to reverse mode by yourself. These shredder measures are 14.6” x 9.3” x 13.3” and the waste bin is able to collect 4.8 gallons of paper or plastic waste. You can check when it’s filled through the small plastic window and empty if you need to lift up the shredding unit that has a plastic handle which will help out that process.
Best Secure Shredder For High Workload Home Offices
AmazonBasics 15 Sheet Paper/ CD/ Credit Card Shredder
This personal paper shredder is another model made by AmazonBasics and it’s great for use at the home office with a bigger amount of documents to shred. It can work continuously for 20 minutes and it will shred paper at the approximate speed of 6 feet per minute. In case of overheating thermal protection is going to shut this personal shredder down to protect the motor.
In a single load, it can take a total of 15 sheets of paper as well as old CDs and credit cards, but they should be inserted one by one. The paper is being shredded to small cross-cut pieces, not bigger than 5/32” x 1-7/32”, to give you medium DIN P-4 protection level. If you have small paper clips or staples attached to the documents, you don’t have to remove them since they won’t damage the blades.
On top of the shredder unit is a user interface with commands- On, Off, Auto and Reverse, and an LED light indicator that will show you when the shredder is in Stand-by mode, if it’s overheated and overloaded, when the doors are open or when the trash bin is full. Besides LED light, you can check the capacity of the trash bin through a clear window. The trash bin has a capacity 6 gallon and you can just easily pull it out when you want to empty it.
Due to its size plastic casters are provided so you can move it where you want to use it without lifting it. Auto-start and auto-reverse mode are here for mind-free shredding since you don’t need to worry about paper jams, but also you can put it in Reverse if bigger amounts of paper are stuck.
Best Micro Cut Home Office Shredder
Aurora AU820MA
Aurora AU820MA is the only micro-cut personal paper shredder on our list. This shredder is able to turn paper into unreadable minuscule fragments for high protection for any type of sensitive data you might have. The capacity of this shredder is 8 sheets of paper (with staples and small paper clips attached) per one pass and one CD/DVD or one credit card at the time.
The sizes of shredded particles are 5/32″ x 15/32” and they are collected in the pull-out wastebasket. Micro-cut particles take up less of the bin capacity since they are 6 times smaller than cross-cut, so you can shred a bigger volume of paper than if it was cross- or strip-cut.
If the shredding unit and the waste bin are misaligned the LED indicator will signal red, also if the shredder is overloaded or overheating, and you can check the power status. Bin window is installed so you can check the capacity and when it’s time to empty it.
Auto-start and auto-stop features will regulate the work of this home office shredder and thermal protection technology is preventing damages caused by increased working temperature by shutting the shredder motor off. Recommended run time is 5 minutes, after which you should leave your shredder to cool down before continuing the work.
ShredSafe technology is here for your safety to prevent accidental injuries; it will stop the blades from working if you push your fingers in the entry slot. That is convenient if you have a home office and your kid or even pet comes to close to the shredder.
Conclusion: What Is The Best Home Office Shredder?
When dealing with home offices safety always comes first. Because of this it should be no surprise that the best home office shredder on this list is the AmazonBasics 15 Sheet Paper/ CD/ Credit Card Shredder, because of its great versatility and the added safety. For more home use shredder lists check out my best home use shredders article. If you are thinking about expanding from your home office into a multi personnel office read my best 5 high capacity paper shredders article.