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Home SliceWhat's the best household paper shredder?

By Laura MoserUpdated Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2008, at 2:18 PM ET

Not long ago, I received an ominously official-looking correspondence from the Minneapolis/St. Paul branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.* The enclosed letter informed me that I had recently been the victim of identity theft, but an agent was there to help me sort my life out.

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The letter raised a few questions. First off: Why the Twin Cities, a place I had visited once on a post-collegiate road trip and otherwise had exactly zero connection to? Second: If my identity had really been thieved, why hadn't I noticed? Why no long-distance phone charges to Sierra Leone, purchases of front-load washers in Singapore, or warrants for my arrest in New Zealand?

I ignored the letter and its several follow-ups, feeling rather sorry for the hapless criminal who had taken the trouble to swipe a financial profile as slender as mine. It was only after hearing several more consequential identity-theft stories from friends that I decided to get serious about protecting my personal information. I opened a new bank account, changed all my online passwords, and—once those hassles were out of the way—went in search of the highest-security paper shredder on the market. Never again would I blithely drop a glossy NO INTEREST PAYMENTS UNTIL MARCH 2010 offer into the recycling bin … not without first obliterating all personal information displayed thereon.

Methodology

For several months now, I have been collecting junk mail so assiduously that I came to fear ending up like Harlem's legendary Collyer brothers, who were buried alive under piles of their own garbage. It's true: I was staggered by the volume of paper that got stuffed through my mail slot every day, and that's after I repeatedly declined unwanted Pottery Barn clearance catalogs at CatalogChoice.org. The only upside of getting all this unwanted junk is that it allowed me to put the six shredders I selected to the test.

Capacity (10 points): The shredders I tested were all light- to medium-duty, designed for home use, and capable of shredding from eight to 12 pages at a time. Could these machines really take on as many pages as the manufacturers claimed?

Design (10 points): Always a crucial factor in assessing an object that will adorn your work space. Is it pretty? How much room does the shredder take up—is it compact or unwieldy? Other relevant considerations: How easy is it to empty the trash can? Are there any noteworthy design extras, like an LCD screen or a "basket full" indicator, and do these extras make much of a difference?

Efficiency (10 points): How loud is the shredder? This question mattered more than I'd anticipated, as some shredders made such an ungodly racket that I couldn't bring myself to switch them on without pregaming a couple of Excedrin first. Other points: Are the shreds small enough to effectively obliterate personal information, foiling even the most energetic meth addict's attempts to piece the pages back together again? How quickly does paper jam, and how easily can jams be undone? Last but not least, are these shredders, which ranged in price from $39.99 to $164.99, worth the money?

The results, from functional to phenomenal …

Fellowes Powershred 8-Sheet Shredder Fellowes Powershred 8-Sheet Shredder, $46.99 (originally $119.99)

"Powershred" is right, in that this eight-sheet machine sounds like an arsenal of power tools all in operation simultaneously. (Imagine being trapped in a small bathroom with a weed whacker, a chain saw, and a welder, and you will have some sense of this shredder's high-level clamor—really excruciating stuff.) The pluses: I like that you can throw CDs and credit cards in the same slot that takes the paper. Some other models require you to switch slots depending on what you're shredding. But once I started feeding material into those machines, I didn't want to pause. The Fellowes also has some useful safety features, and you certainly can't beat the price. But unless you plan to shred wearing noise-canceling headphones and/or aspire to drive a family of raccoons out of your home office, you might have trouble with the decibel factor here. I also didn't like having to remove the hefty top to empty the bin. Next.

Capacity: 6
Design: 5
Efficiency: 4
Total: 15 (out of 30)

Royal AG10X 10-Sheet Cross Cut Shredder Royal AG10X 10-Sheet Cross Cut Shredder, $69.99
The pale-beige color of this machine isn't exactly cheering, and I regretted that you had to peer closely to notice the warning graphics over the shredding slot, images that on other models were thrillingly vivid. (Men's neckties! Infants' skulls!) The Royal is loud, and for the price it could stand a few more bells and whistles. De-jamming paper requires toggling the on/off switch over and over again, and emptying the basket is a messy business, which is more the rule than the exception, I'm sad to report. In fact, most of these flaws are fairly standard issue. There was nothing egregiously wrong with this perfectly functional 10-sheeter. Bonus points for accepting even more paper than its stated 10-sheet capacity.

Capacity: 7
Design: 4
Efficiency: 6
Total: 17 (out of 30)

OfficeMax Diamond Cut Eight-Sheet Shredder OfficeMax Diamond Cut Eight-Sheet Shredder, $39.99
If you are looking for a supersimple, straightforward "light duty" model, this Office Max might be just your bag. It's compact, easy to operate, and can take on a few pages more than its advertised eight-sheet capacity. And who can argue with the price? Drawbacks: It's pretty slow, and jams are hard to clear up. The on/off switch was temperamental, and you have to remove the top to clean out the bin. Still, if your shredding needs are fairly low-volume, this nice-sized, bargain-price model is a solid pick.

Capacity: 6
Design: 5
Efficiency: 6
Total: 17 (out of 30)

Fellowes Intellishred 12-Sheet Shredder, $164.99 (originally $299.99)
This latest, greatest Fellowes shredder is what the pundits might call all hat and no cattle. It gets all the details down: It has handy little wheels, an attached basket to store on-deck documents, and blinking lights to indicate, among other crises, an overstuffed bin and an overheated engine. This machine was also the quietest I tested, a quality I cannot commend enough. Final perk: This shredder has a slide-out bin that seems to me a great leap forward in shredder design. Pulling out the basket—rather than decapitating the whole machine—greatly minimizes the exertions of bin-emptying and the mess of stray shreds flying about after the fact. The top three shredders all shared this feature.

And yet, and yet. There is a not-insignificant chink in the armor, which is that the Intellishred just doesn't shred as many pages as it should. A row of lights signals exactly how hard the shredder is working, blinking red at, and then rejecting, any too-thick bundle. This automatic shutdown feature is certainly useful at preventing jams; the problem is that it gets activated much too quickly. Instead of simply inserting a credit-card offer into the jaws intact, you must first open the envelope, then feed a few pages at a time—an inconvenience that, to me, violates one of the primary principles of the home shredder and, for that matter, consumer appliances in general: Good technology should make life easier, not complicate it further.

Capacity: 4
Design: 9
Efficiency: 6
Total: 19 (out of 30)

Staples 12-Sheet Diamond Cut Shredder Staples 12-Sheet Diamond Cut Shredder, $129.99
Supersize proportions notwithstanding—picture one of those step-lid trash cans—I was a big fan of this shredder. It lives up to its touted 12-sheet capacity, swallowing frequent-flier statements and cell-phone bills in a single swift chomp. You could even see the bulkiness as an advantage if, like me, you are unfond of emptying the (conveniently pull-out) bin after every shredding session. And if you are sitting at your desk, the height of this cylindrical shredder is just right.

Capacity: 9
Design: 5
Efficiency: 8
Total: 22 (out of 30)

Staples Mailmate M3 12-Sheet Shredder, $79.99
At first, the rather higher-than-necessary noise level of this 12-sheeter put me off, but its other fine qualities soon came to compensate and then some. For one thing, it's remarkably compact, about the size of a laser-jet printer. It's delightfully easy to empty, with a plastic handle that allows you to slide out the bin without moving any furniture. The Mailmate also has quite a lot of oomph, and not just for its size; it had no difficulty destroying even the thickest, most irresistible offer from some now-defunct lending institution. My only real quibble, other than the noise level, is the horizontal paper-feeding mechanism—the others are all vertical—which can necessitate hovering over the machine a split second longer than my modern lifestyle really cared to accommodate: Feeding it 12 pages is just as easy, or as difficult, as feeding it one. Still, if you are looking for a powerful identity-protector for a cramped space, you can do no better than the Mailmate. The next time I hear from the FBI, I hope it's just that clicking sound on the line that assures me they're tapping my phone again.

Capacity: 9
Design: 8
Efficiency: 7
Total: 24 (out of 30)

Correction, Oct. 2, 2008: The article originally referred to the FBI as the Federal Bureau of Investigations, plural. (Return to the corrected sentence.)