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Fellowes Powershred 79Ci

Tony Hoffman
 & Tony Hoffman Senior Writer, Hardware

Our team tests, rates, and reviews more than 1,500 products each year to help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.

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Fellowes Powershred 79Ci - Fellowes Powershred 79Ci
3.5 Good

The Bottom Line

Simple to operate and able to shred all sorts of office material, the well-rounded Fellowes Powershred 79Ci can work well as a home or home-office shredder, or as a personal shredder in a small office.
Best Deal£573.53

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£573.53

Pros & Cons

    • Simple to use.
    • Shreds CDs, paper clips, staples, and credit cards, as well as paper.
    • Matched its rated speed in our testing.
    • Not as jam-proof as promised.
    • Casters are hard to attach.
    • Unusually heavy lid.

The Fellowes Powershred 79Ci ($239.99) is a good choice as a shredder for your home office, or as a personal model for your small office or home. It's easy to use and reasonably fast. It can also chop paper into small enough shreds to be secure for most documents, and shred CDs, plastic cards, paper clips, and other items in addition to paper. The 79Ci ($218.99 at Office Depot® & OfficeMax®) doesn't look flashy, but it's dependable, priced well for its capabilities, and gets the job done.

Design and Features
The 79Ci measures 21.3 by 15.4 by 10.4 inches (HWD) and weighs 33.3 pounds. Most of that weight is in the lid, which was not easy to remove or carry. The shredder is designed to sit on four casters, which proved difficult to snap into place.

The 79Ci is similar to the Fellowes Powershred 73Ci ($274.90 at Amazon) , which comes in at a slightly lower price. It has a larger paper capacity (16 sheets, to the Fellowes 73Ci's 12 sheets), can chop paper into smaller shreds, and has greater endurance, as it is rated to shred twice as long without a break. It is also boxier than the sleekly designed Fellowes 73Ci. It lacks the ability to automatically shred a stack of documents that we've seen in more expensive models like the Fellowes AutoMax 130C Auto Feed Shredder ($301.78 at Amazon) , our Editors' Choice shredder for a small or home office or a personal shredder.

Fellowes Powershred 79Ci

On top, to the front-right of the feed slot, are physical controls: a button with a start icon, flanked by forward and reverse buttons (represented by forward- and backward-arrow icons, respectively). Paper inserted in the 9-inch-wide feed slot in the lid ends up in the 6-gallon pull-out bin. Like most shredders, once you insert the paper far enough into the feed slot, the shredder grabs it and pulls it in. If you try to put too many sheets in, you'll get first a yellow, and then a red, warning light.

Performance
The 79Ci matched its rated speed of 10 feet per minute, a typical speed for a document scanner. The fastest we've tested is the comparably priced Staples 16-Sheet High-Speed Cross-Cut Shredder ($199.99 at Quill) , which we timed at 14.7 pages per minute. According to Fellowes, the 79Ci can shred for 20 minutes before it needs a 30-minute cool-down period, while the Fellowes 73Ci shreds for just 10 minutes, followed by a 20-minute cooling down. The Ativa Professional Plus HDPro 2000 ($279.99 at Office Depot® & OfficeMax®) , which is more expensive than the 79Ci, is rated to shred for up to 2 hours before needing a cooling-off period.

Fellowes bills the 79Ci as a 100-percent jam-proof shredder, but it didn't quite live up to that claim. It's rated to shred up to 16 letter-size sheets at a time. When I put a sheaf of 18 sheets in, the red warning light came on, and I couldn't shred automatically. When I pressed the start button, it jammed, and I had to clear it by pulling the remains of the mangled sheets out using scissors and needle-nose pliers, which took some time. To keep the 79Ci jam-free, you'd best heed the red warning light.

This is a cross-cut shredder, cutting paper into shreds much shorter than paper length. I measured them at about 0.16 by 1.3 inches, small enough to be suitable for destroying all but the most sensitive documents.

Conclusion
The Fellowes Powershred 79Ci does well as a moderately priced business shredder for single-person use. It lacks the blazing speed of the Staples 16-Sheet High-Speed Cross-Cut Shredder, the endurance of the Ativa Professional Plus HDPRO 2000, or the ability to shred a large stack of documents unattended, like the Editors' Choice Fellowes AutoMax 130C Auto Feed Shredder, which can chew through a 130-sheet stack. It sells for a little more than the Fellowes Powershred 73Ci, and can shred more sheets at once. Overall, the 79Ci is a well-rounded and solid, if not dazzling, choice.

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Final Thoughts

Fellowes Powershred 79Ci - Fellowes Powershred 79Ci

Fellowes Powershred 79Ci Review

3.5 Good

Simple to operate and able to shred all sorts of office material, the well-rounded Fellowes Powershred 79Ci can work well as a home or home-office shredder, or as a personal shredder in a small office.

Get It Now
Best Deal£573.53

Buy It Now

£573.53

About Our Expert

Tony Hoffman

Tony Hoffman

Senior Writer, Hardware

Since 2004, I have worked on PCMag’s hardware team, covering at various times printers, scanners, projectors, storage, and monitors. I currently focus my efforts on 3D printers, pro and productivity displays, and drives and SSDs of all sorts.

Over the years, I have reviewed smart telescopes, iPad and iPhone science apps, plus the occasional camera, laptop, keyboard, and mouse. I've also written a host of articles about astronomy, space science, travel photography, and astrophotography for PCMag and its past and present sibling publications (among them, Mashable and ExtremeTech), as well as for the former PCMag Digital Edition.

The Technology I Use

I have a Lenovo ThinkPad T14 laptop that's my work daily driver, an HP Pavilion Aero 13 as my primary personal laptop, and an Asus ProArt P16 for detailed photo work. (I also have an older Dell XPS 13, which now stays at home full-time.) For storage testing, I rely on our three custom-built Windows testbeds in PC Labs, as well as a 2024 MacBook Pro.

My primary home monitor is a BenQ EX2780Q, a gaming monitor with a great sound system and excellent image quality. I use that panel for writing, watching videos, and working with photos. I also have an HP 27 Curved Display—one of the first general-purpose curved monitors—which I have paired with an Acer Aspire desktop computer. My multifunction printer is an Epson Expression Premium XP-7100 Small-in-One. I also own an Epson Perfection V39 flatbed scanner, which I use for photos and short documents, and a Canon Selphy CP1300 small-format photo printer for turning out snapshots.

My first cell phone, in 2006, was a Motorola Razr; since then, it’s been all iPhones—I currently have an iPhone 15 Pro. I use my iPhone a lot for casual photography, though I also use a Sony DSC-RX100 VII and a Canon G5 X Mark II for everyday shooting. For much of my travel photography and astrophotography, I use either a Sony A7r II or A7 III, paired with a variety of lenses ranging from a Sony 14mm f/1.8 prime to a Sony FE 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 G OSS zoom lens. I also pair the A7r with a RedCat 51 for deep-sky star shooting. For astrophotography, I also use the Seestar S30 and S50 and the Unistellar Odyssey smart telescopes, which are essentially astronomical cameras controlled through one’s mobile device.

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