Fellowes LX22M Micro-Cut Shredder Black

This is a beautiful piece of equipment. It arrives fully assembled and ready to use out of the box. Even the casters are pre-installed. It looks ultra modern and sleek in the white color, almost like a piece of office art. It's very quiet. The entrance mouth is big enough to make feeding paper easy. So far it's working great. Shreds as specified to 4x12mm approx. The waste bin operates very smoothly. I also like the electronics. I had purchased a different shredder from Aurora but ended up returning it. Nothing wrong with the Aurora, but the feeding mouth was so small I had to struggle to load paper. That shredder required assembly and wasn't nearly as sturdy or nice looking. That said, the Aurora is half the price with a similar spec. It really depends on your budget and needs. If you have the budget the fellowes is well worth the difference.

I bought this shredder to replace my old Fellowes MS7Cs, which I'd impulse-bought at Sam's Club maybe 20 years ago. The old one probably would have lasted forever, but I didn't oil it frequently enough early on, so eventually the blades dulled, it got squeaky and could shred fewer sheets (maybe 4-5), and then one day the increased resistance broke the drive gear between the motor and blades. Rather than try to fix the old one (which would need both new blades and a new gear), I decided to replace it with the most recent shredder of the same size, a Fellowes LX210. The new one is superior in almost every way, except that the shred size is a little larger. You can see in the attached picture that the old shreds (top) are about half the size of the new shreds (bottom). But the LX210 shreds are still quite small, about 1/8" wide by 3/8" long (about 3 mm wide by 10 mm long). You can see a couple of letters at a time on a shred, but that's it. Unless you're on the NSA's watch list, nobody's reconstructing your documents from that :) The LX210 can easily shred 12-14 pages of old bills at a time, or even more if it's thinner paper. And the new status light on the front gives you feedback on how much paper to put in, so you're not over- or under-loading it. My old shredder, you just had to guess by how much the motor lugged down. But the new one shades the light from pulsing green (optimal) to yellow and red if you overdo it. That way it never has to get stuck and back up like the old one did. The LX210 also has a yellow temperature warning light that comes on as it starts to get close to cutoff temperature. This is nice, because it lets you stop before you drive it right to the thermal limit, which is probably not good for blade longevity. My old shredder would just stop right in the middle of a sheet, then after a few more seconds a red light would come on, and you'd have to wait 20 minutes or so to resume. The LX210 can shred at least two full bins in a row without having to stop for a cooldown. If you're going to shred a lot of stuff, you'll need to buy more bags and more oil. It comes with 3 bags and a 0.5 oz bottle of oil. You're supposed to oil it after each bag is filled, and the little bottle only lasts for 2 or maybe 3 oilings if you do it like the instructions say (squirt all the way across the blades, run motor, repeat). So each oiling takes maybe 0.25 oz of oil. Don't skimp on it, or your blades will dull and you'll lose capacity like I did with my old one. I bought two 12 oz. bottles of Fellowes oil, and a 100-pack of their bags, which is about the right ratio. I wouldn't call it quiet exactly, but it's not noisy either. The motor makes a deep hum, and the paper crackles a bit as it's pulled to its doom. All in all, it was a great purchase, and a great upgrade from the older model.

We purchased the 20-sheet version since it wasn't that much more expensive than the smaller capacities and it gave a better feature set. It is an absolute beast. It went through a couple years worth of shredding in short time, and I never had to worry about staples or paper clips. A tip: I didn't find using a bag inside the machine to be useful. Paper shreddings still fell into the hopper outside the bag. Just fill the hopper then dump the hopper into a bag. Less mess and easier. What I like: +Capacity!! It chews up just about any amount you throw at it. +Doesn't even blink when you throw paper clips or staples in - eats them the same as anything. +Continuous operation. I never had it overheat. Used it constantly for 30 minutes, which is its rated use. +Good looking design. This is purely subjective but it is a nice looking fixture. +Hopper size. I went through 3 hopper fills with my initial purge of to-shred papers. I'd hate to think of how many I'd have gone through with a smaller bin. +Solid feature set with auto-clearing, etc. +LED indication of shredding performance - really dial in how much paper you can feed through at once. +Capacitive touch sensor across both sides of the paper feed which will stop the machine if an errant finger gets too close to the opening. This is a phenomenal feature for safety. +Super easy to set up and get going What I'm indifferent on: =The noise levels are acceptable. The first time I heard it I was amazed how quiet it was, but then I guess I got used to it and it seems to make some noise. Very manageable, but it's still there which I suppose is unavoidable. =The price is what I would expect. I didn't find it especially good value nor did I find it a rip-off. It is significantly more expensive than lesser machines, but "lesser" is definitely the defining characteristic to note. If you've got the money, treat yourself to a very nice piece of kit. I used card points to buy it, which somehow made it feel less bad to spend this much money on what is essentially a luxury item for my home office. What I dislike: -Not much to dislike here. Still wish it could handle more paper at once and I didn't have to orient sheets, but those are a pretty nit-picky complaints that don't really apply at this price point. Conclusion: It's absolutely overkill for our household and work-at-home needs but it is such a wonderful luxury to have a machine that works so well. I've always had cheap old generic shredders. This is such a joy to use and I'm glad I was able to get it.

Very happy with this shredder. My last fellows lasted 25 years. This one is larger, quicker, quieter and definitely high tech compared to my last one. Hope this one lasts as long, time will tell. I would recommend based on the short time I’ve owned it.

I really like this shredder; big capacity for shredded material and effortlessly shreds what I put in it, however, the red light comes on for no apparent reason and I have to pull the shredded paper container out and reset the shredder to get the red light to go out. Turning the power switch on and off does not reset the red light or whatever is causing it to come on and lock up the shredder. Other than that, it works well and has a reasonable noise level.

After 3 months of using this shredder, I am very pleased. This is my 3rd shredder over the past 25 years for home use. This is the first one that will grind through 12+ sheets at once. (Not sure about the 20 sheet claim but that would be tough on the motor and shredder blades of most commercial shredders.) I have had other shredders in the past that claimed they would shred 10-12 pages but they hung up with more than 3-4 sheets. This thing also shreds to very tiny pellets. The combination of the very small pieces and a large bin allows me to shred a lot more paper before I have to empty the bin. I also like that they make bags designed for the shredder bin so I don't have to guess. All in all, a very solid shredder!!

This shedder replaced my 19 year old Fellowes 77 shredder. It is well made, very easy to use, does a great job, and is exceptionally quiet.

This is one tough shredder. It’s been running for hours with very few breaks. The chips that come out are really tiny making it essentially impossible to piece the pages back together. It’s quiet for what it does and is pretty intuitive in terms of sensing if hands are nearby and if a jam will occur. If it thinks there will be a jam it pushes the pages back out a little then pulls them back in. I will say it looses half a star because the safety sensors sometimes go crazy and the entire machine goes dark. Not until you either unplug it or pull the drawer does it turn back on. Then it works again for a while until the sensors trip again. That can be disruptive but is a minor nuisance. It appears to be caused by having your hands close to the feeding slot too many times. Sometimes though it’s not an option because receipts are smaller in size. Overall this is a great shredder with a stellar warranty of three years. Let’s see how it holds up over time. Don’t forget to oil it every time you empty the bin though.