GBC ShredMaster Home Office Shredder PSX12-06

I’ve had this for months but I’ve been so busy I didn’t have time to use it. Finally a few weeks ago I finished work early and decided to go through old paperwork that I’d only been holding onto because it had sensitive info on it. I think this shredder is okay, but if you need to use it regularly it has issues and you might want to look elsewhere.

1. I believe it says you can put up to 12 sheets of paper in it, but you should definitely not put in more than 10. You can tell that the machine starts to have a hard time when the amount you put in gets too thick.

2. It jams incredibly easily. Even though I made sure to empty out the bin frequently, because of how it shreds paper, you end up getting the shredded bits piled up prematurely right under the shredding mechanism. So as it’s shredding, it’s picking up the discarded shreds, causing it to jam. And while it’s easy to unclug the underside of the shredder, the feed side is incredibly difficult to remove the paper jam. Paper gets stuck in the actual feeder mechanism in addition to getting jam packed and you have to fight…FIGHT…to get it out. I had to use a metal pointed nail file to remove the jam from the top. With 30 minutes of solid use, this thing jammed 3 – 4 times, with each time taking 3 – 5 minutes to clear the jam. So…be mindful of that.

3. This shredder only works with paper. So, if you’re trying to get rid of old credit cards and the like, this isn’t the machine for you.

4. The shredding mechanism doesn’t lock onto the bin, it just nests in it. My husband was cleaning around the shredder and thought that it had a lock so he put it on it’s side — shredded bits everywhere.

As a human alive in 2020, you should have a shredder.

But shredding is such a chore.

Sadly, this shredder won’t help with the chore part; it’s still an irritating job to do, especially if you have a lot of mail piled up that needs shredding. But at least it works great. It’s gone through a pile of paper for me. My only critique is it doesn’t do credit cards and I’m not sure why that is; but I have another shredder that does, so I keep them separated. Which is the way to go—shredded papers and credit cards should probably go in different buckets.

This is a really nice shredder, worth considering.

this is my 3rd shredder this year – why is it SO difficult to find one that works? This one is really frustrating. When you power it on – the blue shred button blinks slowly – you then have to press the power button to start the shredder. But you have to press it just right or the shred button just keeps blinking. Once you press it perfectly – the blue shred button will stay solid. It is NOT a 12-page shredder. It struggles with 5 pages. It jams frequently. I don’t think i’ve been able to get 50 pages done in the past hour. I’m keeping it for now because there don’t seem to be any better options – and THAT is frustrating too!

I’m not a heavy shredder, but it’s great to have one in the house to shred sensitive documents (financial documents, especially). So I wasn’t looking for industrial strength, just something I could plop down in my home office and use a few times a week.

This one does the job just great. It will shred multiple pages easily and quickly, and it cross-cuts, as recommended for truly destroying sensitive information.

I’ll drop in a video to show it in action. It’s fairly quiet (although I don’t think that’s a big consideration). If you have a LOT of documents to shred, you may want to use a shredding service to catch up — although this one is pretty quick, there’s no autofeed or anything to accommodate really big jobs. But for day to day needs, it’s great.

Controls are simple. So simple that you don’t need a whole lot of instructions. Plug it in, and turn on the power toggle switch (on the back). You can leave that toggle on, and if you want to turn the shredder off for safety when not in use, just use the touch power control on the top. It will automatically power itself off after 6 minutes of idle time anyway.

There’s also a touch control to activate shredding, so touch it and drop your paper into the shredding slot, and you’re done. There’s a reverse button, in case you get a jam.

I appreciate the recessed blades. I’ve seen shredders with exposed blades, and they look more than a little menacing. As you can see in the video, my dog inspected the shredding process without injury (although I got a little nervous about his tongue!).

You’ll want to be careful with some fasteners. Read the caveats included in the directions. I haven’t tried shredding stapled materials, but it promises to glide through staples easily.

What you won’t be able to shred includes credit cards and similar cards or objects. For that, you’ll still need old-fashioned sissors

I’ll also attach a photo of the finished product. It’s . . . shredded. The container is 6 gallons — plenty big enough for my needs, so I won’t have to empty it too frequently.