Dynex Split-Shred Paper Shredder

Up until recently I had piles and piles of personal and financial documents lying everywhere, waiting to be shredded but I had one problem.  I didn't have a shredder.  My boyfriend and I finally decided it was time to get rid of these piles and pick up a paper shredder.  So we went to Office Max one afternoon to check out our choices.  After being overwhelmed by all of the kinds of shredders we finally decided on a nice small cheap one, the Dynex Split-Shredder. 

This one was a pretty basic shredder.  It wasn't one of the fancy ones that shredded compact discs or credit cards or twenty pages at a time, all it did was double shred about 4-6 sheets at a time; which was really all we needed.  By double shred I mean it shreds vertically but also horizontally as it goes through; thus making it almost impossible for someone to try and tape the pieces back together again.  This was really important for us because we live in an apartment complex and you never know the type of people that might go through your trash there.  If it just shreds vertically, yes it would be difficult to piece back together, but not impossible.

The Dynex shredder works really well and has had no problem shredding everything I've put into it.  The only thing I've noticed is that it will not really shred a whole envelope that has papers in it.  It starts to jam up the shredder so then you have to hit the reverse shred button to get the envelope to come back out.  What works best is taking the papers out of the envelope and putting them in 3-4 at a time and then shredding the envelope seperately.

The bucket that all of the paper goes in probably holds up to 100-200 shredded sheets or so, give or take.  Something I don't like though and is probably a downfall of all shredders is that it leaves white dust from the papers everywhere.  It coats the walls of the bucket and then comes off the shredded paper and onto your hands when you pull it all out to put it in a trash bag.  However that's just a really really minor fault, not that big of a deal.

Overall I would recommend this shredder.  It gets the job done, which is really all that matters, and it is available at a very affordable price.