Fellowes AutoMaxª 100M Auto Feed Shredder

The AutoMax 100M is Fellowes' small auto-feed shredder, and the reason to own one is behavioural rather than technical: 100 sheets go into the hopper, the lid closes, and the paper gets destroyed whether or not anyone is willing to stand there feeding it.

It is rated for one to three users and built around a 6-gallon bin, a 15-minute run time and a cut of 5/32 by 25/64 inches — roughly 4 by 10 mm, about 39 mm² per particle. Fellowes markets that as micro-cut; under DIN 66399 it is P-4, because micro-cut in the standard begins at P-5 and a 30 mm² ceiling. Both descriptions are defensible, but only one of them files correctly against a procurement specification.

Key Features

• 100-sheet auto-feed hopper. Load, close, walk away — the feature that determines whether confidential paper actually gets shredded.
• Ten-sheet manual feed slot for single sheets, cards and creased paper.
• DIN 66399 P-4 at 5/32 x 25/64 in (about 4 x 10 mm, roughly 39 mm² per particle) — a notably fine cut for a P-4 machine, well inside the 160 mm² the class permits.
• Shreds staples, paper clips and credit cards, so post can go in as it arrives.
• SilentShred operation for use in a shared room.
• Auto reverse jam prevention, sleep mode and an LED bin-full indicator.
• Six-gallon pull-out bin in a 26.38 x 15.38 x 14.56 in cabinet weighing 37.2 lb.
• Two-year machine warranty with seven years on the cutters.

The duty cycle deserves a straight answer, because it is the specification most often glossed over on auto-feed machines. Fellowes rates the 100M at 15 minutes on and 35 minutes off. A full 100-sheet hopper finishes inside the 15 minutes, so a single load is never a problem; two loads back to back will hit the cool-down. If your pattern is one hopper at a time, this machine is well matched. If it is four hoppers on a Friday afternoon, it is not.

Specifications

Sheet ratings are Fellowes' figures for 8.5 x 11 in, 20 lb paper at rated voltage. Fellowes does not publish a decibel figure for this model, describing the acoustic design only as SilentShred, so no noise row is shown.

What's in the Box

Shredder with auto-feed hopper, 6-gallon pull-out bin and power cord. Fellowes specifies its own non-aerosol vegetable-based shredder oil, part 35250, and asks that the machine be oiled each time the waste bin is emptied. Aerosol lubricants must not be used in any shredder.

Who Should Buy This — and Who Should Not

Buy the 100M for a home office, a consulting room or a two-person practice that produces a folder of confidential paper at a time. The value is in the hopper: a machine that shreds without supervision gets used, and one that needs feeding sheet by sheet does not. At roughly 39 mm² the particle is finer than most P-4 machines manage, which is a genuine benefit even though the DIN class does not change.

Do not buy it for continuous work. Fifteen minutes on and thirty-five off is a personal-scale duty cycle, and the 6-gallon bin fills quickly; the AutoMax 350C and 550C step up to 350 and 550 sheets with 18- and 22-gallon bins. Do not buy it if a policy names P-5 micro-cut — the AutoMax 600M is the machine in this range that genuinely reaches it at roughly 28 mm². And if you need optical media destroyed, this model is not rated for CDs or DVDs; the 350C, 550C and 600M are.