First of all, nothing holds more truth than "You get what you pay for" when it comes to shredders. Any shredder under $90 is most likely junk, with plastic gears and not likely to last more than a year. I would not touch a cheap shredder with a 10 foot pole.

I did a lot of searching for a heavy duty shredder at around $100 or just a bit more.. I did not want to spend more than that.. I finally found this Royal 15MX, which seemed to have heavy duty design yet priced very reasonably. Shop around, you should be able to find it for a good price.

I have not been disappointed in this shredder so far. After owning it for close to a year, it happily munches through anything we can throw at it. Just dont exceed 15 pages, and it will chew it up. I only jammed it a couple of times, and I knew beforehand that it will probably be jammed because I intentionally put too much in it at once against my better judgement. Call it operator error, not the machine's fault. :)

The best things about it are, it is a crosscut shredder, the most secure type; it can shred a LOT at once; large basket, no need to use bags, but you can use regular trash bags if you want to; manual forward / reverse swich (very important); slide out basket, so it is easy to clean; solid steel cutters, so they will last

It has a CD shredding feature, which I tested, it works fine, but I have no particular use for it. For someone needing to shred CDs though, it completely demolishes a CD in a second or two. The CD shredding is a heavy duty business, so it implies a heavy duty design as well. It can shred credit cards to bits in seconds.

If it is important to you, it looks good as well; stylish unit, not at all ugly.

Buy an extended warranty with it if you can. Small price to pay for peace of mind.

Recommended:
Yes

Purchase Price (if leased, monthly payment): 105.00
Machine age (Months in use): 12