Fellowes Powershred 485Ci Cross-Cut Shredder

So far so good. About two months into using this and it works great. It is dubbed the "Ollie North 2000" in my office due to its shredding prowess. I am using the standard bags they recommend and using the blade oil every time i switch out the bag. The only thing that I can find to complain about is the bag filling up and giving a warning about being full prematurely. The tight nap of the cross shred kind of clumps and just needs to fall a little cleaner, but giving the receptacle a little jostle usually settles the shred to give you more time between bag changes. Probably have to do this three times per bag before changing but not that big a task. Great for business use / continual use. It doesn't seem to slow down or get angry. Rejects pages when the stack is too thick, and has a pretty reliable reverse action to kick the choke point back to you.

Fellowes 425ciAs a small business, I have a problem where I generate 3 file boxes of paper that needs to stored, and the problem becomes worse when it is time to shred. I have gone through 4 office shredders and I felt I needed something more heavier duty to shred the archived paperwork. This shredder has been my answer. The bin fills up after one file box full of paper, but makes easy work of the chore. I love that it self oils and since it has wheels, it can be easily move into the corner after I have finished. I have a Fellowes confetti shredder for daily use. I use a 45 gallon trash bag as a liner instead of the trash bags that you can get from Fellowes. I only had this shredder for a few days and will I can hopefully update this review after several months. There are more expensive Fellowes shredders and I am not sure how they compare to this model. Even though the directions does not recommend using the shredder for radiographic film, I have found that it does a great job of shredding.

This is a great, heavy duty cross cut shredder. We purchased it to replace a very old one that we could not get repaired. So far it had worked great!

This unit is very heavy but is on wheels for easy positioning. It grinds through an impressive amount of paper quickly. It does use a lot of oil and we have started purchasing Canola oil from Costco rather than the small bottles from the manufacturer. The unit is a little noisy and it does use a lot of bags. All in all, it is an excellent unit and we are very happy with it. This is my second unit and I am using it at home rather than a cheap and slow shredder.

I bought this shredder about two years ago. I use it for my home office and have shredded about 2000 sheets over that time. The sensor for determining if you are putting too many sheets in at one time has gone bad and now I can't use it at all. I called Fellowes who sold me new sensor boards and the paper sensor for a about $150. I changed them which was not rocket science. Now it does not work at all. This is supposed to be a commercial grade shredder handling thousands of sheets per year and I have barely used it and it has failed. I did call a company to come out and check the shredder. $300 per hour! It wouldn't take long for me to spend what it would cost to buy another shredder. I won't be buying a Fellowes again.

This was a nice shredder until it stopped cutting and instead started creating "fish bones" out of our paper.We had one issue within the first year and since there was a 2 year warranty the support technicians promptly fixed the problem with no hassle.Then two years and a week after we purchased this shredder, it started jamming and now will only cut paper into what the tech calls "fish bones". Despite multiple calls and emails with the service company we are unable to get anyone to fix this shredder. And the price for repair is nearly as much as buying a new unit. I'm very disappointed we have to throw out such expensive equipment after 2 years, of fairly light commercial use.

For a week straight after receiving this shredder, I had worked through a printer box worth of material a day and on the last day, two boxes worth. It took about 40-45 minutes non-stop each box, which could have gone faster if I did not spend so much time (re)reading some of the material before I destroyed it (you can never be too careful). It worked great. A few times there I got sloppy and inserted more than the 22-page limit, but it would either stop and warn me or reverse itself then feed them through anyway.The five free bags it came with were sturdy, but instead of getting a replacement box of bags with the order, I bought a box of 200-count 33-gallon clear bags with built-in tie handles for much less at one of the big-box stores. The bin is only 22 gallons but the extra 11 gallons and the tie handles allowed me to cram more confetti into each bag, allowing less confetti to spill out when removing the bag from the bin and when tying it up. The 33-gallon bags were thinner than the ones made specifically for the shredder, but they did the job. There could be problems lifting a full bag out of the bin when the bags catch and rip on the lip of the trim that surrounds the top, which is easily fixed by using packing tape to cover the seams all the way around on the inside.After each change of bag, I squirted the included vegetable-based oil across the opening, as recommended and continued on with the shredding. Very quiet. You hear more of the paper crunching on its way to the cutting teeth than you do the motor. Someone I showed it off to was surprised at how quiet it seemed to her.After about the second box, the stray pieces of confetti that make their way out of the unit when changing the bag start to produce a bit of a mess, partly due to the static that builds up and attracts the pieces to the bin and to the inside of the bay, which all find their way to the outside. But two boxes is a lot of paper and that is such a minor issue for what you get in return, which is a great commercial-grade shredder that is quiet, solidly built, and comes with safety features. I like.