Kobra 400 S5

The Kobra 400 S5 is the volume model of the 400 range. It shares the chassis, the 16 inch throat, the 53 gallon bin and the 2,100 W continuous-duty motor with the cross-cut 400 C4, but the head is a 5.8 mm straight cut — DIN 66399 P-2. That trade is deliberate: you give up particle security and gain roughly 25 percent more sheets per pass and a bin that takes far longer to fill. It suits organisations destroying high volumes of routine internal paper where the retention policy does not demand P-4.

Key Features

• Highest sheet throughput in the 400 range. 52–54 sheets per pass at 80 g/m², rising to 60–62 on 70 g/m² stock. Strip cutting takes less torque per sheet than cross cutting, so the same motor moves more paper.
• Strip waste compresses well. P-2 strips settle and pack down in the bin far more than P-4 particles, so a 200 litre cabinet holds the output of many more sheets before it needs emptying.
• 24 hour continuous duty motor. The same 2,100 W drive as the rest of the 400 family. No duty cycle, no timed cool-down period.
• 400 mm throat, stapled documents accepted. Feed A4, Letter or Legal short-edge first with staples and paper clips still attached.
• Media capable despite the strip head. Kobra rates the S5 for credit cards, chip cards, CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray, floppy disks and USB pen drives.
• Quietest of the 400 family. Rated 58 dB(A) — a single steady figure rather than the 58–61 dB(A) range of the cross-cut C4, because a strip head has fewer cutting events per sheet.
• 24 hour duty means it survives archive purges. The failure mode of office shredders is a thermal cut-out halfway through a records clear-out. There is no timed cool-down period on this drive.

Specifications

What's in the Box

Shredder assembled on its cabinet, pull-out 200 litre waste bin fitted, 115 V power cord. Waste bags are not included. Strip-cut heads are far less oil-hungry than cross-cut heads, but occasional lubrication with proper shredder oil still keeps capacity up.

Who Should Buy This — and Who Should Not

Buy it if your problem is volume, not classification. Print rooms, mailrooms, schools, logistics offices and anywhere that generates crates of superseded internal paper will get more work per hour and fewer bin changes from the S5 than from any cross-cut machine on the same footprint.

The other honest argument for the S5 is running cost. A strip head produces less paper dust than a cross-cut head, so it needs oiling less often and the knives see less abrasive wear over a working life measured in tonnes rather than reams.

Do not buy it if you shred anything that identifies a person. P-2 strips are legible enough that a determined party can reconstruct them, and most privacy programmes — HIPAA-adjacent records handling, HR files, financial statements — will not accept it. For those, the Kobra 400 C4 is the same machine with a P-4 head, and the compromise costs you about a dozen sheets per pass. If your policy specifies P-5, neither 400 model qualifies; look at the Kobra AF.1 C2 for desk-side volumes or the Kobra 430 TS C2 for departmental volumes. Buyers who empty full wastebaskets rather than feeding sheets should consider the Kobra 400 WB hopper model.