There quite a few things to consider when it comes to buying the best paper shredder. We think the following three are the first things you would be looking at before getting one of these for your needs:
1) Price
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A while back when shredders just started appearing on the market, you would often got what you paid for. The good shredders were extremely expensive and the smaller scale versions weren't available. These days this is not the case. You can get a decent quality machine with most if not all the features you want within your budget. No more breaking the bank.
2) Size
Its important to keep in mind the size of the shredder you will be able to accommodate. If your home office or workspace is a little cramped already, you can consider hand-held or desktop shredders. The hand-helds are really light and weight less than 2 pounds. The major limitation of the hand-held ones is that they do not shred the A4 size sheets easily. Some manual folding or tearing will be necessary before you put it in the feeder tray. If all you need your shredder for is receipts then this shredder will work for you. For most people, this is not the primary shredding device because it doesn't work well with the most common paper sizes.
3) Cut
This is not something that you will think about when you first start looking but the type of shred cut could turn out to be important later on. There are 3 types of cut - cross cut, straight cut and confetti cut. As far as security is concerned, the easier it is to reassemble the shredded paper the less secure a type of shredding is considered. So, that being the criteria, the straight cut is the least secure and the confetti cut is the most. Understandably, the better security is the less likely it is that your information will get stolen or you will be a victim of identity theft. So, the confetti or crosscut shredders are more expensive than the relatively cheaper straight cut ones.