Ranked #4 in Best Paper Shredders
Amazon Basics 8-Sheet Micro Cut Paper Shredder3.9
1 source$75as of Oct 17A micro-cut shredder rated for eight sheets, with a 4-gallon pull-out bin and a separate CD slot. Wirecutter names it its budget pick, reporting that it never jammed on junk mail, credit cards or CDs and outperformed some models at twice the price. TechGearLab gives it its Best Bang for the Buck award, found it shreds 10 to 11 sheets despite the 8-sheet rating, and scored it 68/100, marking it down mainly for speed. It suits households with light, intermittent shredding; anyone clearing large backlogs should look elsewhere, because it stops after five minutes and needs a 30-minute rest.
Strengths
- — Micro-cut blades handle paper, credit cards and CDs; Wirecutter saw it never jam
- — Shreds beyond its 8-sheet rating: TechGearLab fed 10-sheet stacks easily and 11 with a slowdown
- — Very small 0.18 x 0.5 in shreds, the highest-security cut in TechGearLab's comparison
Watch-outs
- — Runs only five minutes before a 30-minute cooldown, so it suits light, occasional jobs
- — Slow: 41 sheets per minute at most and 9 seconds for a single sheet in TechGearLab's tests
- — Cutters kept running for almost a minute after the last sheet, a concern around toddlers
