The new line of Fellowes office and personal shredders includes a new anti-jam feature with an even quieter operating level for an even better home, office or business shredding.
Ease of Use/Performance: 24/25
Convenience/Storage 24/25
Appearance/Design 25/25
How much I enjoy 24/25
Total: 97/100
The Fellowes Intellishred PS-79Ci does a great job of safely shredding your important documents or even ID cards and CD’s with some very nice and handy features. The Fellowes PS-79Ci shredder is a small office and personal shredder designed for medium use to crosscut shred your documents for identity protection.
The PS-79Ci uses a 9 inch wide entry slot with a cross cut shredding with plenty of safety features with the newest being their anti-jam feature. The anti-jam is not exactly fool proof but nothing on any shredder is, it is simply a switch that stops the shredder from running if it is depressed too much.
The anti-jam switch prevents you from starting too many sheets or other material into the shredder so you don’t start the shredding with too much material. They have added other features like the CD flap slot that flips over the shredding slot to improve the shredding of CD’s, ID and credit cards to improve other areas of shredding as well.
The shredder works very well and does a great job of shredding documents and such safely using a touch sensor around the slot so you cannot shred anything with fingers near the slot. Another safety feature is the auto reverse so if the shredder does jam it will start to reverse immediately to prevent it from being a worse jam.
A shredder is supposed to shred documents, id cards and even CD’s so that they cannot be read after shredding. The Fellowes PS-79Ci does a great job with its cross cut shredding but it does cut in the direction you put it in from. I noticed this when I shredded an old ID card and it left one piece with an ID number perfectly on a piece of the crosscut.
This is probably a very large coincidence and the chances of actually getting a piece of document or card with an all important number intact on it are pretty slim. But still, you should be careful to always shred ID’s and credit cards so that rows of numbers are going to be cut across them. This ensures you cut across the lines of print on anything going through the shredder like id cards or credit cards and cuts lines across small groups of numbers.
The PS-79Ci does a great job of preventing jams by the small switch right at the start of the slot and also has an infrared beam that starts the shredding motor and stops when there is nothing to shred. This auto start function means you can leave the shredder on and not worry about it running all the time. The Fellowes PS-79Ci shredder will be ready for use any time just by placing your documents in the slot.
The infrared beams do need to be cleaned every now and then but that is no problem, just clean after you oil the machine in your routine maintenance schedule with a Q-tip and you’re ready to go. This is another one of those office machines that will require periodic maintenance like oiling and you should do this often enough that the shredder does not get dry. Oil keeps the small dust and debris from clogging up the shredder head and makes for worry free operation of your shredder.
The anti jam switch is another device that needs a little more explanation and understanding; it will not prevent you from jamming up the motor and shredding head. What it does do is prevent you from putting too much stuff in the slot so that the machine is not trying to shred too thick a stack of papers or one large envelope of junk mail.
A small switch sits in the middle of the slot that prevents the motor of the shredder from running if it is pressed too much. This is monitored by a bar of lights with green being okay to shred and yellow a warning while red means the shredder will not run.
You can foil this device using the sides of the slot and just putting envelopes and other small things beside the switch. Envelopes or smaller items will go through the shredder but you are not guaranteed it will not jam. I tried this out with several junk mail offerings and the shredder did a good job on some of those silly credit card applications I got with several things in them but it did stop and reverse on a couple that I put through.
Some of them had those fake credit cards and several papers folded up so I am not surprised that it did jam up when not putting them through the center. The PS-79Ci shredder handled the jam in the traditional Fellowes way of just backing it out some and trying again. I had no problem reversing or watching the machine reverse itself a couple of times on some of these larger bits of junk mail and it handled the rest of the envelope just fine with a second chance at shredding.
The PS-79Ci shredder does a great job with stacks of papers, newspapers or junk mail and you can simply take small hand full’s and put through what you are told by the small bar and get a good amount shredded in a short time. I did a bunch of newspapers and other papers and had no problem shredding a small stack in a few minutes without jamming the shredder.
The shredder can handle some pretty tough tasks like papers with several staples and even paper clips but I would not recommend doing the larger paper clips as a habit. The more wear and tear you put on any machine the sooner it will wear out and cutting up a lot of paper clips will eventually break down any shredder. The PS-79Ci can shred paperclips and staples easily so you don’t need to worry about them; I just think you should remove at least the paper clips when you can, you know, recycle them.
I found shredding the staples and regular sized paper clips was a simple task that the shredder did not even balk at. The shredder did not even sound like you were cutting anything but paper when I tried shredding a few paper clips attached to some papers. The larger paper clips will make some noise but they cut cleanly on my trial runs of a few through the shredder “in” slot.
So you can shred documents, paper clips, staples, CD’s and ID cards; just shred those so print gets cut apart, you know, read the id card as it goes through the slot. I had no problems what so ever on the couple of bags of shredding I performed and even the paper clips and staples, CD’s and ID cards along with the unopened junk mail and newspaper all shredded just fine.
I also compared my two shredders from Fellowes and both shred paper clips and staples well and do not give any indication while shredding the smaller paper clips but make some noise when hitting the bigger ones. The previous model shredder I reviewed six months ago is also about six or seven decibels noisier than this model. I tested each shredding paper with a noise level meter and the Fellowes model PS-77Cs is a little noisier so they are getting better and quieter with the newer models.
The Fellowes PS-79Ci is a great shredder and I again highly recommend the Fellowes shredder for a great worry free and trouble free shredder. My other Fellowes shredder is still going strong without any problems since I received it more than six months ago with constant use in my home and office. A general cleaning every so often and a good squirt of oil and it purrs through the junk mail and credit card applications.
