GBC Thermal Laminator Machine, Inspire, 1701855

I really like this laminator. It works very well. I have had excellent results protecting my precious papers and certificates. I’m very glad I was given it as a gift. It’s not something I would have purchased for myself, but friends, I’m glad I have it. It’s a simple to use machine and heats up in about 10 minutes. Enjoy, J

I bought this laminator when it was the Deal of the Day and have not regretted it for a moment. This machine is so wonderful that I would buy it at full price.

It heats up fairly quickly (4-7 minutes) and maintains a constant temperature. I would recommend using this laminator on a flat, open space, preferably non-metal surfaces. I use it on top of my wood desk and it lightly warms the wood during use. Make sure to allow it to fully cool down before storing it, as it does retain heat for awhile after use.

I use Swingline GBC UltraClear Thermal Laminating Pouches and they come out beautifully every time. There is a barely noticeable curl to the end that comes out first when you do not grab it first thing, but that is more user error than anything. With the letter size 3mil pouches, I have laminated one page, two page, poster board, poster board and printing paper, and magazine page thickness documents without problems.

I work as an instructional coach in special education. I visit multiple schools in a day. Often I create materials and want them to be used right away. It may be a week before I am back at that building. So, it is important that I can laminate materials quickly and waiting for the schools to get it done isn’t always an option.
The warm up time is longer than other models that I have used taking at least 8 minutes. I have learned to plan accordingly and this has not been a major draw back of the machine.
If I am laminating a single page of paper (full 8 1/2 by 11 size) the results are great. However, most of my laminating involves items that were cut prior to placing in the pouch (picture schedule icons, file folder items, etc). When I put the items in the pouch they lay nicely but it is a challenge to get them to stay in the same spot as I feed the item through the laminator. My prior laminator had a cardboard carrier that the pouch was put into first. This really helped the items stay where I had put them. Another colleague has a pouch laminator that has a feeding tray on the front as well as the back. This allows you to lay the laminating pouch flat prior to feeding it. I never had a problem with items shifting prior to laminating. Since the majority of the work I do will involve putting multiple smaller items into one pouch I have found that if I stack a book next to the machine I can get the same effect of a tray and have since minimized some of the shifting.
Even with the long warm up time and needing a way to keep smaller items together,I would probably have rated this a 5 star product because of the great price and the fact that it is very portable. I keep it in the original box and it fits easily into a standard sized reusable tote bag. However, I have used the machine for less than a month (maybe about 40 sheets of Swingline brand laminating film) and have experienced a problem already. I called the customer service number provided in my owners manual and the lady was one of the friendliest customer service representatives I have spoken to in a long time. She told me what I needed to do to get a replacement. (just made the request, so I am not sure how long that will take). Hopefully it will not continue to be an issue.

I am so very happy with the quality of this little laminator. The cleaning sheet got stuck and it wasn’t pretty, careful if you use that.

I’ve owned this laminator for about 3 years. It is wonderful! It doesn’t take a lot of space and works really well! It’s hard to tell when it’s on, because the light doesn’t turn on until it’s ready. It also has no jam release button, which would help when the paper isn’t fed in right. This has definitely been put to the test–I’ve laminated 100’s of things and it’s held up great! It finally bit the bullet when it got jammed and I couldn’t fix it.