Fellowes AutoMaxª 100MA Auto Feed Shredder

The AutoMax 100MA is the light, low-cost way into Fellowes' auto-feed range: the same 100-sheet hopper as the 100M in a cabinet that weighs 22.7 pounds instead of 37 and stands under 21 inches tall.

The savings show up in the bin and the duty cycle rather than the cutting head. At 4.5 gallons the container is a quarter smaller than the 100M's, the run time is five minutes of manual feeding, and the warranty is one year on the machine with three on the cutters rather than two and seven. If those trade-offs suit how you actually shred, it is a lot of auto-feed for the money.

Key Features

• 100-sheet auto-feed hopper in a cabinet light enough to move with one hand.
• Ten-sheet manual feed slot for singles, cards and creased sheets.
• DIN 66399 P-4 at approximately 5/32 x 15/32 in (about 4 x 12 mm, roughly 47 mm² per particle).
• Shreds staples and credit cards alongside paper.
• Auto-reverse jam prevention with auto start/stop and a bin-full indicator.
• 4.5-gallon pull-out bin in a 20.25 x 13.38 x 9.81 in cabinet.
• 22.66 lb — genuinely portable, which matters if the shredder has to be shared between rooms.
• One-year machine warranty with three years on the cutters.

The run time is the specification to weigh before you buy. Fellowes rates the 100MA at around five minutes of continuous manual feeding, with the auto-feed cycle rated a little longer. That is short even by the standards of personal shredders, and it means the machine is designed to work through one hopper load and then sit idle rather than to be fed continuously. For a home office that is entirely reasonable. For a shared desk in a busy office it will become an irritation.

Specifications

Sheet ratings are Fellowes' figures for 8.5 x 11 in, 20 lb paper. Fellowes does not publish a throat width or a decibel rating for this model, so those rows are omitted rather than borrowed from a neighbouring machine.

What's in the Box

Shredder with auto-feed hopper, 4.5-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 100MA for a home, a spare room or a small office where the shredder is used occasionally and space and weight matter. The auto-feed hopper is the same 100 sheets as the heavier 100M, so the headline capability is intact, and at 22.7 pounds it can be lifted onto a shelf or moved between rooms without a second person.

Do not buy it if the machine will be used most days. The 4.5-gallon bin will need emptying after little more than one hopper load, and the short run time means back-to-back sessions run into a cool-down; the AutoMax 100M is the same hopper capacity with a 6-gallon bin, a 15-minute duty cycle and a much longer cutter warranty. Do not buy it if you need CDs or DVDs destroyed, or paper clips — Fellowes lists staples and credit cards for this model but not optical media. And for anything approaching departmental volume, the AutoMax 350C is the first genuinely shared machine in the range.