The Fellowes Powershred 99Ms Micro-Cut Shredder ($499.99) is a good choice for accountants, attorneys, and other professionals who need to destroy sensitive documents. This micro-cut shredder, designed for use in a small office by up to three people, cuts paper into much smaller pieces than even the best cross-cut shredders that we've seen. If you don't need the 99Ms' ($529.00 at Amazon) level of security, for $170 less you can get the Editors' Choice Fellowes AutoMax 130C Auto Feed Shredder ($378.22 at Amazon) , which can chew through large stacks of documents unattended.
Design and Features
The 99Ms is a large and tall shredder, measuring 25.2 by 17.4 by 11.2 inches (HWD), and it stands on four casters. Its layout is somewhat unusual in that the 9-inch-wide feed slot on top of the shredder is perpendicular to the door of the paper basket, running straight back. The only shredder with a similar configuration that we've tested is the Swingline EX14-06 Super Cross-Cut Jam Free Shredder ($232.99 at Staples) . Paper inserted in the 99Ms' paper slot ends up in its good-size 9-gallon pull-out bin.
The 99Ms is a micro-cut shredder, cutting paper into shreds shorter and narrower than cross-cut shredders. I measured the shreds at about 0.088 by 0.5 inches. Its ability to cut documents into such small shreds makes the 99Ms a strong choice for handling financial, legal, or other particularly sensitive documents. By the DIN 66399 security standard used by shredder manufacturers to help define the various levels of security for international paper shredding, it ranks as level P-5, making it suitable for shredding secret documents. There are still two higher levels, with the highest mandated by intelligence agencies for shredding top-secret files, but unless your firm deals with unusually sensitive documents, level 5 should suffice.
The small shreds have another advantage in addition to security: They take up less space. According to Fellowes, the 9-gallon pull-out bin holds 80-percent more micro-cut particles per gallon than standard cross-cut particles that are typical of the shredders we have reviewed, including previous Fellowes models. You should need to remove the bin much less often with the 99Ms than with a cross-cut shredder. And you'll be able to fit much more paper in each recycling bag.
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The 99Ms is easy to operate. Controls located on the top of the shredder's front-right corner, consist of back and forward arrows flanking an Enter button. When the shredder is on, you just put the paper in the slot, and shredding should begin. You use the back arrow to reverse the shredding direction and back the paper out in case of a jam, the forward button to shred, and the Enter button to return to the default automatic mode.
In addition to paper, the 99Ms can shred plastic cards and staples, but it can't handle optical discs. Many shredders, including the Swingline SX19-09 Super Cross-Cut Jam Free Shredder ($504.94 at Amazon) , can shred CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs, as well as paper clips. The device itself comes with a one-year warranty and there's a 7-year warranty for the cutter.
Performance and Conclusion
The 99Ms has the chops for medium-duty shredding duties in a small office or workgroup. In my testing, it fell just short of matching its rated speed of 11 feet per minute (fpm), turning in 10.5fpm. The 99Ms can shred up to 16 sheets at once, two more than Fellowes estimates. It can shred for 20 minutes before it needs a 40-minute cool-down period, giving it slightly more endurance than the Swingline SX19-09, which can shred for 16 minutes before needing that 40-minute break. The Staples 16-Sheet High-Speed Cross-Cut Shredder ($199.99 at Quill) was faster (14.7fpm) in our testing, and can handle more sheets at once (20), but could only shred continuously for 8 minutes.
The Fellowes Powershred 99Ms Micro-Cut Shredder is a particularly good fit if you need to destroy sensitive financial or legal documents and not worry about someone piecing them together. It showed solid performance in our testing, though it's a bit on the pricey side for what it delivers. One thing it can't do is shred optical discs, a job that many shredders, such as the Staples 16-Sheet Shredder, can handle with ease. It also lacks the convenience of an auto-feed feature like the Fellowes AutoMax 130C, our Editors' Choice shredder for small-office, home-office, or personal use. What it does provide, however, is the security that an accounting or legal office needs to ensure that, once shredded, a discarded document is gone forever.
The Fellowes Powershred 99Ms Micro-Cut shreds paper into small enough pieces to provide secure disposal, even for very sensitive documents.
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