When it comes to working from home, or just dealing with the paper aspects of your daily life, a paper shredder is a must have. For some strange reason, I have been through a ton of paper shredders, and destroyed many of them in my wake.
Today I’m going to review the best paper shredders you can buy under $100. I have found through my experience and research that this is a great price point for both value and performance.
Why Do You Need A Paper Shredder?
First things first, why do you need a paper shredder? Like I said, this is one of those things that everyone should own.
The main reason you need a paper shredder is to protect yourself from things like identity theft. You should never throw out anything with information that can be used to personally identify you – this includes your address!
Everything with your name, address, and phone number should be shredded, not thrown away.
Anything with an account number or balance should also be shredded, not thrown away.
Basically, anything that can be used to identify you, or that you wouldn’t want the whole world seeing should be shredded, not thrown away.
Picking the Best Paper Shredder Under $100
There are many things to look at when picking the best paper shredder, such as size, shapes, and aesthetics. Paper shredders are not small, and may become a permanent fixture in your home office or office area.
There are three important things to be concerned about when picking your paper shredder besides these features. The fist thing is how many sheets of paper you can shred at at time. Go above this, and you will find your shredder jamming.
This is the most important thing to consider for the performance of your shredder. I will be sure to call out how many sheets each shredder can handle in this list.
The next thing is how does the paper get shredded. There are two main ways here, cross cuts or paper shreds. From a security prospective, cross cut is ideal since it renders the document completely useless.
If you are just shredding into strips of paper, theoretically someone can still reconstruct the document.
We are only going to look at cross cut shredders in our list.
Finally, we must consider the run time. Shredders are a mechanical device, and require a cool down after a certain period of use. The shredders in this list range from a three minute to a 10 minute runtime before they will need to cool down.
Now, let’s take a look at some paper shredders.
Best Paper Shredder Under $100
When it comes to the best paper shredder, there are many things to consider. First of course is what it looks like and how big it is, but it is also important to take a look at how many pages it can shred at once, and what kind of shredding mechanism it uses.
We won't look at antyhing that makes those annoying long paper strips - there are more secure methods out there for shredding sensitive documents. We will only be looking at cross cut and above shredders.
Finally, it is important to know how long your shredder can run before it needs to cool down. We will also clearly let you know how long this is for each and every shredder.
That's why we are going to take a detailed look at these paper shredders in plain english to help you find the best one.
AmazonBasics 12-Sheet Cross-Cut Shredder
This AmazonBasics shredder has a massive 12 sheet capacity, and a credit card slot to make destroying expired cards easy.
It has a 7 minute run time, and will need to cool down for 30 minutes afterwards.
It has a good size capacity, and window to see how much shredding has accumulated.
AmazonBasics 8-Sheet Cross-Cut Shredder
This AmazonBasics shredder has a capacity of 8 sheets, and also has a credit card slot.
It has a 3 minute run time, and will need to cool down for 30 minutes afterwards.
It has a silver accents and a silver outlined window to see how much paper has accumulated in the shredder.
Bonsaii 8-Sheet Cross-Cut Paper Shredder
This Bonsaii 8 sheet paper shredder has a 4 minute runtime.
As you can see, it also has a convienent handle, so of you are sharing this shredder with someone else in your office area, or want to easily move it around, that is a big win. It can also handle credit cards with no issue.
Fellowes Powershred P-30C 6-Sheet Cross-Cut Shredder
This Fellowes shredder has a 3 minute runtime and a 6 sheet capacity. It also has a convienient window so you can see how full the bin is so you know when to empty it.
It is very compact, which is important in many home office spaces.
Fellowes Powershred 8MC/8MC5 8-Sheet Micro-Cut Shredder
This Fellows shredder has a 5 minute runtime and a 8 sheet capacity.
It also is a micro-cut shredder as opposed to a cross-cut shredder like the others. This means it cuts the paper even smaller, and is more secure than a strip-shredder or even a cross cut shredder.
It does take more time to do the shredding, but if you are shredding very sensitive documents this is a good choice.
As a bonus, micro-cut is creates smaller paper pieces so more can fit in the bin than with a cross cut shredder.
Aurora AU1415XA 14-Sheet Crosscut Shredder
This Aurora shredder is your workhorse. It boasts a massive 14 sheet capacity and 10 minute runtime, and also has CD and Credit card slots.
If you have a lot of shredding to get through, this is a serious contneder for your best cost effective shrerdder!
It is a bit taller than many of the other shredders featured here, but if you have the space it makes up for this in both capacity and runtime.
Aurora AU1200XD Compact Desktop-Style 12-Sheet Crosscut Shredder
Also by Aurora, this shredder has a 12 sheet capacity and 5 minute run time, along with CD and credit card slots.
It is a very compact design, which is important if space is at a premium. This does mean you will have to empty the bin more often.
Tips For Using a Paper Shredder
It an be easy to let your shredding get backed up!
Make sure you find a couple of minutes each week to spend shredding those sensitive documents.
Designate a bag or bin as your destination for what needs to be shredded, and simply shred the contents once it fills up.
Don’t try put too many things into the paper shredder at one time, or it may lock up or overhead. Neither of these mean the end of paper shredder, it just may need a little break.
When shredding credit cards, shred a single credit card at a time to prevent jamming.
Be careful when emptying the shredder bin, or you may have a paper shredding disaster on your hands! I have noticed both young children and cats tend to really enjoy playing with those shreds.
The best paper shredder under $100 will serve you well for all of your document destroying needs. Remember, if you don’t want the whole world to see it, it should go into the shredder!