Amazon Basics Micro Cut Paper Shredder

Fantastic shredder! This replaced a 15+ year old Royal brand shredder that finally wore out. Well first off, my old Royal was advertised at the time as "cross cut" and it shredded into confetti. Flat little 1/4" by 1/4" squares, way too small to read any printing on. As I recall the shredder was not all that expensive back then either, probably $110 on sale at the time. So I go to my local warehouse club and buy another Royal "cross cut" shredder. I even get the $99 top-end one, not the other $49 Royal. And what do I find? Inch long strips!!! In what universe does that count as "shredded"? I can clearly read text on those strips. Long enough to view part of a bank number, or a credit card CCV code, you name it. I read up on this and discover that these days inch long strips are what you get with a "cross cut". They have now invented a new word, "micro cut", for actual shredding. Go figure. Plus now it seems that most shredders are designed to at least shred credit cards and the better ones like this to shred CDs. Maybe the old Royal could have shredded credit cards. Never even occured to me to try since that just really sounded like something that shouldn't go through a shredder. So I start reseaching "micro cut" shredders and reading the comments. Lol, from the comments it sounds like the vast majority are junk. Break easily, only do a fraction of the rated pages, arrive broken, etc. As confirmation of that I at one point had decided on a $200-or-so micro cut from one of the office supply big box stores. But comments said it rather quickly breaks down and leaves big long strips rather than micro cuts. I go to my local store to have a look, and what do I find in the bin of the one on display, along with the handful of micro cut paper? a dozen big long strips. Geezzzz. New right out of the box and already the thing is broken. While reseaching the micro cut shredders I found this line of AmazonBasics units. Reading through the comments for the various shredder sizes the number of reported problems seemed to drop the bigger (more expensive and rated at more pages) the shredder gets. At the 17 rated pages here the comments seemed largely positive, with the few negatives sounding like outliers. I knew from all the comment about various shredders I've read so far that you really should divide the rated sheet capacity on ANY shredder by 2 to remove the marketing spin. 17 sheets here should be 8 and 8 sheets does sound like about the stiffness of a credit card. If one were to be especially brave and use a 2/3 metric that woudl be 0.67 * 17 = 11 sheets, which should be about the stiffness of a CD. So I'm thinking maybe, just maybe, this shredder would do what it says it does. I ordered it and right off the bat discovered something. See those selections on the right for optional 2 or 3 year extended warranty? You can't go back and buy those after you buy the shredder. I didn't want to buy them until I knew if the thing worked. It does, so I called Amazon and can't buy the extended retroactively. I could probably return it for free to Amazon then re-buy it with the warranty, but no I'm not going to do that. Next up is the packaging. Good job, Amazon. The manufacturer in China properly put the shredder's box in an outer shipping box and let that get beat up in transit, not the shredder's box. If It had arrived without an outer shipping box, just the shredder box with a label stuck on it, I wouldn't have been a happy camper. The outer box is just barely bigger than the shredder's box, large enough for two cats to play in at once (tested). Old TV repairman's trick here for dealing with large heavy things in boxes. Don't take the shredder out of the box, take the box off the shredder. Open the box lid and turn it upside down (the top has protective foam around the top of the shredder), then pull the box off the shredder. Then flip it back around. The shredder comes with the wheels installed. As for the shredder, IT WORKS!! Just as described. The shredded paper is tiny confetti like the old Royal, although it is bent 60 deegrees in the middle. All the micro-cut shredders seem to do that now for some reason. The old Royal left the pieces flat. And yes it does shred credit cards and does it wonderfully. As luck would have it I received a new card in the mail a week after getting the shredder and ran the old card through. Didn't slow the motor a bit, just like shredding a few papers. Couldn't even really tell the plastic shreds from the paper. I had to rub a few pieces between my fingers to feel some plastic shreds from the card. I haven't tried shredding a CD yet. I'll have to work up to the throught of inserting a CD in a paper shredder. I'm going to compare this shredder to the $99 Royal from a warehouse club: * No lid to move or open!! Just turn it on and stick the paper in the slot. Yeah!! The design philosophy seems to be that i'm going to be smart enough not to stick my fingers deep into a paper shredder. Good assumption. Like one or two comments noted the paper has to go in the slot 3 or 4 inches to start the motor, but hey my old Royal did that too. There is your security feature. * No separate slot for credit cards and CDs, just a marked section in the middle of the one slot. Excellent. The warehouse club shredder had two slots very close to each other than I couldn't even see in the dimly lit room where the shredder lives. * Quiet! My old Royal used to be quiet, but 15 years later it could probably wake the neighbors a house away. This one didn't even wake the cat sleeping nearby. * The auto-shutoff works well. The auto shutofff in my old Royal used to be the same way, the shredder would shut down after 15 seconds or so with no paper in the slot, But that eventually died too on the Royal, a couple of years ago. I've just been turning it on and off as needed. Great to have one with the auto-shutoff working again. * I see comments about small pieces of paper not auto-starting the shredder. Pro Tip: the sensor is right in the middle of the slot. In the manual they even have a picture of where it is located in case it needs cleaning. If you are shreeding something skinny, small, whatever, feed it in right in the middle of ths slot. My old Royal was exactly the same way. * The bin pulls out in front. I've seen a picture of a certain shredder with the bin pulling out to the side. What was that manufactuer smoking. Shredders go into tight spaces under desks. Where there is no space on the sides. And a few nuggets of wisdom from the instructions, once i finally had some time to read them: * IT IS DESIGNED FOR SHREDDER BAGS!! I almost didn't buy it because of this seeming omission. My old Royal didn't have shredder bags and micro-cuts, as they call them now, can create quite a mess when some of them stick to the sides of the bin (static electricity I guess). Not a word in the Amazon description about shredder bags, but there it is on page 9 of the manual. There is a hook molded into the top front of the bin on each side to hook the bag, then the back of the bin has a special shapped slot to stuff any bag excess. They have a picture that makes it all clear. The big box office supply store where I looked at shredders has shredder bags. * It should be oiled monthly. In fact on page 8 it discusses oiling and even states failure to do so will void the warranty. Another omission from the Amanzon description. It seems like just common sense the blades in any shredder will last longer and stay rust-free with occasional oil. I oiled my 15 year old Royal about once a month. The big box office supply stores have official "shredder oil" in a bottle, which is what the instructions on this unit say or use, or cooking oil (don't do it! It will gum up I'll betcha. Use the correct stuff). The same big box office store that had the shredder bags also has a package of pre-oiled sheets you can run through shredders. The simple and easy way. If using the oil in a bottle the instructions say to run a bead right across the paper input slot, then put it in reverse for 3 seconds. * It has the typical door open / overheat / overload / power-on LEDs * Shuts itself off after 5 minutes as an "Energy Saving Auto Power-off". Lol, anytime you see the words "energy saving" or "ECO" on something you will find that is usually the poor performance mode that the device was never really designed for, but it sounds good for marketing spin. Run away. In this specific case though it is probably a good thing. So you do have to hit that big "on" button at the start of each shredding session. This answers the question you will have of "Didn't I leave it on last time? Why is it off now?" * Auto-reverse. If you stuff so much in that the "overload" light comes on it auto-reverses to spit it out. Probably a good thing. Why did you stuff that much paper in anyway? * Truth in advertising on page 4: "One folded sheet of paper equates to 2 sheets of paper. Heavier paper, humidity or other than rated wall socket voltage may reduce shredding capacity". Just plain old common sense stuff. Like "coffee is hot" or "knives are sharp". * A little yellow piece of paper inserted in the manual says "As part of AmazonBasics quality inspections, we test every shredder before shippiing it. Because of this, you may see paper shreds in the bin from the testing". Well if this is true, good work Amazon! Reading through the comments for the various shredder models and types it sounds like the out-of-the-box failure rate is over 20%, either immediately or within a few hours/days. With a failure rate like that I would say it is absolutely necessary to test shredders at the factory. Ever buy aftermarket car parts? My experience has been over 50% DOA brand new, right out of the box, and they will only last a year if you are lucky. That is why it is worth going to the dealer and paying 4x. It will work 95% of the time right out of the box so you don't have to spend another day uninstalling/reinstalling and you might get the same 5 years out of it you did with the original part. I'm writing this review just a couple of weeks after receiving the shredder, due to being really happy with it. I have no idea how long term reliability will be. I expect it to be awful, quite frankly, but I'm so happy at that point just to find one that shreds properly I guess I don't even mind if I have to re-purchase it in a year. Which goes back to that extended warranty I can't buy anymore. See if Amazon will refund those warranties (they tell me it is some outside company) if you return the shredder. If so its a no-brainer. Sign up for the 3 year extended warranty, then if you don't like the shredder return it and the warranty. The 17 sheet here is definitely the one to get. If you are looking at smaller Amazon Basics shredders do yourself a big favor and get this one. You know as well as I do that "6 sheet shredder" of just about any brand is probably going to load down after 3 sheets because the motor belongs in a pencil sharpener. Why do that to yourself. Life is too short. Buy this shredder that as some muscle and be happy.