Fellowes FS5 Shredder

Pros: Cheap
Cons: Cheap; Doesn't Work As Described; No Way to Tell When It's Full

You get what you pay for…someone said that long ago and he/she was right. This is the 3rd shredder ...

Pros: compact, no jams, comes with basket, supports staples
Cons: largish strips, ends stick to mechanism, need to empty frequently, not as robust as claimed

I've been resisting buying a shredder for my apartment because I don't think I have enough important documents to dispose of that I really need one. I still don't think not having one is a problem, but when I saw the Fellowes FS5M shredder on sale for ...

Pros: Compact and powerful, will do the job as long as it is maintained.
Cons: Expectations it can cope with larger tasks. Slightly noisy. Troublesome when it clogs.

When I first caught sight of an electric shredder three years ago at Argos and being slashed from 30 pounds to an incredible 9-99 pounds ($19.90), I had to buy one. Largely as I'm a musician I'm forever buying second hand books and old scores from second ...

Pros: Stylish Look and see-thru basket
Cons: Jams often, Only shreds one sheet at a time.

I was worried about identity theft so I bought the Fellowes FS5 Shredder because it was inexpensive and I didn't really have loads of shredding to do. I works fine it you only shred one sheet at a time, but if you try to shred multiple sheets it jams ...

Pros: Not applicable
Cons: Cheap defective junk

This thing was wired incorrectly right out of the box. It ran backwards, and I had to feed the paper through the bottom of the shredder! It ran for no more than 4 minutes, and I turned it off. It wouldn't turn back on.

Avoid this brand!

Pros: Low price for a low workload and mobile.
Cons: Does the minimum amount of shredding.

Product:
Fellowes FS5 shredder with wastebasket.

Typical use:
Shredding normal letter and legal size papers.

Review:
This product is an inexpensive option for your light shredding needs. And when I say light, I mean light. The 5 page maximum has been a pretty accurate guideline for our office. When I put too many papers in, like say 7, it comes out whole and crinkled on the other side. We have never tried to put anything with staples in, for fear of ruining the shredder. We chose this shredder because it fit the budget our office gave us. If we had more money to spend, we would have gotten a higher quality shredder. There are some positives to this shredder aside from the cheap price though. The shredder has an adjustable side and can be used with other waste baskets. This is useful for us when we're shredding a large amount of stuff. But since we usually only shred a few papers a day, the small basket normally works fine.

Overview:
This shredder is good on price and versatility but bad on amount that can be shredded.

Pros: Low price
Cons: Poor design, easily breakable; Shreds into big pieces. Loud.

It's loud, but I could cope with that for sake of security at this price.

However, the shredded pieces of paper are too wide and pieces of information can still be read from them, especially if the pages are in landscape format.

My shredder broke in a few months. Gets very weak with the maximum allowed number of pages. Once the papers got stuck and the paper that was coming back out went inside the mechanical sensor so the automatic feed switch stopped working. There is no manual setting so I had to toss it.

Pros: On sale at a great price. Nice metal mesh basket.
Cons: Failed within the first 10-15 minutes. Poor quality.

Internal gears started grinding within 10- 15 minutes of use. The shredder then would not pull paper throught the mechanism. Shredded 3-4 pages at a time (5 max). Eventhough this seemed like a good deal at the time of purchase, I will now have to spend the time to return this product.

Pros: Worked great for 15 minutes
Cons: Cheap parts Didn't work after 15 minutes

I used this machine once and it worked fine for about 15 minutes before it crapped out by not pulling the paper through the blades any more. Upon further investigation I discovered that about half of the well-constructed plastic gears inside the machine were stripped.

This is a piece of junk.