Aurora AU1580MA Professional Grade High Security 15-Sheet Micro-Cut Paper/CD and Credit Card Shredder, 60 Minutes Continuous Run time

If you're trying to shred volumes of letter size paper, this is your shredder. I wanted to get rid of a file cabinet full of old financial documents, plus boxes in the garage and this saved me tons of money I would have spent if I'd taken everything to a professional shredder (or called a shredding company truck) and tons of time if I'd used a regular shredder. Plus it shreds everything into smaller sized, more secure confetti, which in turn takes up less space in your trash/recycling and is less of a mess than cross-cut shredded strips.This shredder is designed for you to open the lid, place several hundred sheets of letter size paper into the bin, close the lid, and walk away. You get other things done while it shreds. Amazing. Come back when it's done and load more. Also, all of these shredders that you can compare it to - they all have "run times" which means how long can it run for before it gets hot and needs to take a break. This has one of the longest run times, so it will shred way longer than the others before you need to stop. Which means more boxes of files done sooner. Awesome.Does it have any drawbacks? Yes.If you want to shred paper that isn't letter size, you won't do well using the letter bin. You need to hand feed through the top. The top feed does not accept a heavy load. You can't put very much down it at a time. If you like to hand feed a lot at a time, this isn't the shredder for you. Also, in the letter bin, paper that isn't normal paper (different weight - too light, too heavy, has folds in it) sometimes it doesn't pull through and the whole batch waits while it spins its gears and you have to pop the lid open and pull the paper on the bottom out and reset the stack.So I shredded probably 20 boxes worth, sold my file cabinet, and took it to my office and kept going.Ok, so then - about the customer service that I mention in my review title: I did have a problem. It's been 3 months... and the entire shredder broke. The main gear system just destroyed itself. Total mechanical failure. (All internal - nothing dangerous.) I was worried that I was going to be one of those 1 star reviews. "Oh why didn't I believe those reviewers?" (But every single shredder you read has some.) So I searched online for Aurora, found their website, emailed customer service and got a response immediately. Not days or hours - minutes. (Yes, it was during business hours.) They had me reply and send photos of the damage / failure plus proof of purchase. They basically said, ok, no problem, you're covered, give us your address so we can ship you a new one. (I did not need to return the old one.) They were so easy to deal with and no hassles - and yes, they spoke English.PROS:FastQuietExcels with letter size paperProduces micro-cut particlesShreds on its ownLengthy run timeGreat customer serviceDoes not require continuous (expensive) oilingCONS:Not as good with hand fed shreddingCan stall on letter size if abnormalDid break after 3 months (but was quickly replaced for free)Final Comment: At this price point, and with their service backing their 1 year warranty, if you have a lot of letter size shredding to do in the near future, it's awfully hard to justify picking a competitor.

I have a LOT of shredding to do--mostly because I've always found shredding so messy, frustrating, and noisy that I kept putting it off and putting it off, filling boxes with old bills, tax stuff, etc.With this shredder, the task is so much easier. First, it can shred 200 letter sized sheets at a time. The inner part can shred ONLY letter sized paper, but you can feed irregular sized paper, credit cards, paper with staples, etc. through the top part, up to ten sheets at a time. You do have to put oil in the shredder--the manufacturer recommends once per month, but with the amount of shredding I've accumulated, I've added oil a few times this month. It's totally easy to do. Just squeeze it from the oil bottle along the shredder teeth & run the shredder in reverse for like 3 seconds. Done. No mess.The shredder is very quiet, the pieces are tiny and can never be put back together, and the bin is large, so you don't have to keep emptying it every ten minutes. Plus, my old shredder would make a terrible mess of little bits of paper everywhere. This one works like a dream, and there is only a mess if I am careless about dumping the shreds into the trash. Worth every cent I paid for it. Omg, what was I waiting for?

This paper shredder, in my opinion, is one of the better ones (if not the best) in its class and price range. It functions as intended; it is very efficient, quiet, elegant, and doesn't occupy much space. I like the fact that, unlike some other shredders, it has a power button within easy reach, not merely an ON/OFF switch on the back side. It shreds documents to tiny pieces of paper that are truly High Security. One other shredder that I tried, a different brand, was misleadingly advertised as High Security; it should've been specified as Low Security instead, since I could read a social security number on one of the strips of shredded documents. Another feature that I like about the Aurora AU200MA is its automatic Energy-Saving mode, which turns off the power after sensing a significant idle time. I cannot comment on the product's durability because I’ve only had this shredder for about a week, and whether the machine is durable or not remains to be seen -- during the full warranty period and, hopefully, beyond that time. Perhaps, for some of us, this type of shredder could be improved by changing its dimensions a bit, such as making it higher and reducing its depth, which is what I prefer.

Hubby's job unfortunately generates a lot of paper that needs shredded. Our last shredder just could not keep up.This thing arrived today and lemme tell ya, she's a BEAST.I timed it- it shreds 200 pages in about 10 minutes. It has a run time of 60 continuous minutes before needing to cool down. That's 1200 pages, or 2.5 standard reams of paper per hour. At this rate, not only will this machine keep up with the pace of hubby's job, we're going to chew through our backlog of papers that need shredded in no time.While also being speedy, this shredder is also amazingly quiet, and the confetti it makes is the smallest and finest I've seen.We've had this for less than 24 hours, but if this performance holds up, it will be a fabulous investment.

I like the confetti this thing makes. Nice large bin. Appears to be well made.Except...The direct feed slot allows pages to divert into the auto-feed hopper. This makes feeding curled or creased or small (postits) pages difficult. I will probably take the auto-feed hopper lid off to get around that problem. Yes, I would buy it again.