Dahle 20606ec Level 2 Strip Cut Office Paper Shredder

Staff Review

Dahle 20606 EC Level 2 Strip Cut Office Paper Shredder Review

Meant to be placed in a central location such as the copy and fax center of your office, the Dahle 20606 EC aims to provide medium to large businesses with a high capacity shredding solution. We recently took a closer look at the 20606 EC’s features, and made a list of what we thought this machine’s strengths and weaknesses are.

Strengths:

1. When you are looking for a shredder to place in a centralized location in a busy office, you will want to make sure that it has the sort of capacity you will need. The 20606 EC is at the top end of that particular category, giving you the ability to shred up to 38 pages at one time, working at a speed of 22 feet per minute. This all adds up to somewhere between 400 and 2,000 pages a day, depending on the weight of the paper you are shredding. This should be more than enough to meet the needs of most busy offices.
2. Another thing you will want to consider when you are purchasing a centralized shredder is the noise factor. There are a lot of shredders out there that can work at high capacity, but unfortunately, can be a bit of a distraction because they don’t operate all that quietly. The 20606 EC has solved this problem by encasing each cutting head in a steel frame, and by placing that frame on well-designed rubber shock mounts to greatly reduce the vibration of the cabinet. This leads to remarkably quiet operation. Something that is essential for placement within a busy office.
3. The 20606 EC has a ten and a quarter inch feed opening that will accommodate the vast majority of shredding jobs with ease. Letter and legal sheets will fit easily as will some of the other custom sized documents.
4. The 20606 EC has a couple of nice safety features. One safety feature includes an automatic shut off when the cabinet door is opened, and an auto reverse function that help prevent paper jams. The machine will also turn itself off automatically when the feed bag is full and needs to be changed.
5. As do all of Dahle’s shredders, the 20606 EC features cutting heads that are made out of the best German steel and are guaranteed for the life of the shredder. Dahle also gives you a warranty of two years on all the other parts.

Weaknesses:

1. The 20606 EC is a fairly high capacity shredder, but you need to be aware that it is a strip cut machine, and thus only offers a security level of 2. If you are a business that needs to destroy your confidential documents in a FACTA-compliant manner, you will need to step up to a Level 3 cross cut machine such as the Dahle 20614.
2. The bin size is 16 gallons, which is not tiny. However, a strip cut shredder like this one will fill a bin this size pretty quickly and you there’s a chance you may find yourself having to empty it more often than you’d like. Not a deal breaker by any stretch, but something to consider.