FellowesPowershred 125Ci 20-Sheet Crosscut Shredder

I am an intelligence professional and have been using level 6 high security shredders for many, many years. I have been wanting a home shredder for a long time. I was looking at the 79i at OfficeMax and they wanted nearly twice the price than what amazon was selling it for. Although this item was marked professional grade, I clearly did not look at the product dimensions closely enough and was a little shocked when i received this 63 pound behemoth. Maybe I should have stuck with the residential model? The instructions were pretty simple, plug it in and turn it on. Mine already had the casters installed, so the only thing I had to do was unscrew the shipping wingnuts. It looked like it came pre-oiled, but I gave it a round of lube just in case and hit the forward button to get the gears going.First impression. it's relatively quiet. Granted, it's a level 4 cross cut shredder, but it certainly performs better than a lot of the $5,000 shredders that I deal with every day. The touch sensor was something I have never seen before in a commercial shredder. I can't imagine getting a finger or anything caught in this shredder, but it is comforting to know that it's there, although i did accidentally hit it a time or two when feeding paper. I kind of thought the jam proof slogan was a gimmick until I jammed it up a couple times and it automatically reversed itself and then shredded the material. Never seen that before in the big industrial models. The shred speed was typical, and when I threw a CD and a micro-chipped credit card into it, it had no problem. I see that the max nonstop run time listed is 45 minutes, but there is no way you can shred in this thing for 45 minutes without having to stop to empty the shred basket. If I had one complaint, it would be that the shred basket doesn't have a good keeper system for the bags. Even my $50 simplehuman trash can has grips to hold the trash bag in place. The shredder also has an auto-off feature after about a minute, but you do not need to turn it back on if you want to feed paper into it; it automatically turns back on from powersaver mode. Awesome! Just for kicks, I plugged it into my Belkin Insight power monitor, and it looks like in on mode (when not operating), the shredder uses 1.2 watts. When it automatically powers down, it's still using .9 watts, but even with Hawaii's ridiculous power cost of 28 cents a kilowatt hour, you're only talking about $2.40 a year. When feeding the shredder, the wattage jumped up to over 400 watts while it did it's thing.Overall, this is a great shredder and I hope to have it for many years. It definitely needs to earn it's keep. I can't say I would recommend this to the average person since this doesn't exactly fit under a desk, nor can it be easily concealed. If you want people to think you're a paranoid conspiracy theorist and shred anything that has your name on it, this will certainly support your reputation. For a small business, this would probably be all you needed. I emptied a trash bag full of documents on it's first run and it was almost as easy as the big commercial models. the only limitation being the feed slot, but even then it took on stacks of paper with no problem. The waste bin could use an upgrade, and I'll probably just use regular tall kitchen bags after I run out of the included Fellowes bags. I also should mention that this shredder comes with a 4 oz. bottle of oil. I didn't know that and had already purchased a bottle for use.

The media could not be loaded. This is a stellar large shredder that eats everything you can fit into the opening faster than you can shove more in. Whether it is 1 page or a stack, it sounds effortless while other shredders whine and slow. It shreds faster than I can pick up and fit another stack into the opening. The opening is actually a great design. It can take nearly anything you can fit in, but it will show you green/yellow/red indicators as feedback about the load before it automatically stops and reverses if too much. But it takes real effort to overload it because it is hard to fit more than it can handle without carefully aligning and inserting a thicker stack. I love being able to throw unopened envelopes into it. I really like the auto on/off energy efficiency so that I never have to turn it on or off again, it is always ready, wakes up instantly, and goes to sleep on its own. It is narrow so it fits more snugly too. It holds a good amount before you have to compress it or empty it. It comes with oil and bags (just oil it every time you empty it).Minor Drawbacks: (1) It is noisier than implied by the description "ultra-quiet". I really thought it would be very quiet. It isn't silent. Someone in the next room can definitely hear it is running, especially on wood floors. Compared to my previous small shredder, it sounds similar, or slightly better due to no stressing sounds. But I might not shred while someone is on the phone in the room out of politeness. (2) You can't fit many envelopes width-wise if you want to avoid fractional readable text appearing on the shreds, but you can just pull out the contents and drop them together. (3) It does mound up inside under the opening like any shredder, but its size gives it a lot of room before it reaches the top. (4) I went through 3 damaged units before settling on my 4th.The first 3 units I received all had cracks in the plastic molding, one dented in on the back near the rear handle and power port. I recommend opening from the bottom and sliding off the box in a way that it would be easy to piece back together to ship back if you find a problem. Amazon was superb, quickly sending 3 in sequence until temporarily pulling the item to inspect inventory, finding no problem, and a week or two later called to send me my 4th. My 4th actually had a loose plastic screw that doesn't seem to belong to anything. But it works great, so I'm happy with it. Just inspect and exchange within the return period if you have a problem like mine. I am still happy I bought mine.