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How to pick
Most people do not need a separate scanner, because the all in one printer they already own does it and their phone does a surprisingly good job of the rest. A dedicated scanner is worth it if you have a genuine backlog, boxes of paperwork or photos, and then a sheet feeder is the feature that matters rather than resolution. On shredders, get a cross cut one rather than the cheap strip cut kind, because strips can be pieced back together. Most identity theft I hear about locally did not start online, it started with mail sitting in a recycling bin.
What I recommend
Getting paper into the computer
Most people do not need a separate scanner, because the all in one printer they already own does it and their phone does a surprisingly good job of the rest. A dedicated scanner is worth it if you have a genuine backlog.
Phone scanning, no purchase needed
Before buying anything, try your phone. Modern phone cameras with a scanning app produce perfectly good PDFs of a page or two, correct the perspective and make the text searchable. For most people this is genuinely enough.
- Costs nothing if you already have a phone
- Good enough for a page or two
- Always with you
- Tedious beyond a handful of pages
- Needs decent lighting
- Results vary with how steadily you hold it
Document scanner with a feeder
The feature that matters is the sheet feeder rather than resolution. Feeding a stack and walking away is the entire difference between clearing a box of paperwork and giving up on it.
- Feeder means you can walk away
- Scans both sides in one pass
- Turns paper into searchable files
- Only worth it for a genuine backlog
- Bundled software is often poor
- Takes desk space for occasional use
Getting rid of it safely
Most identity theft I hear about locally did not start online, it started with mail sitting in a recycling bin.
Cross cut paper shredder
Anything with an account number on it goes in here. Get a cross cut one, because the cheap strip cut kind can be pieced back together. Look for a credit card slot and auto stop when the bin is full.
- Cross cut is genuinely much harder to reassemble
- Handles credit cards too
- Cheap for the protection
- Cheap models jam constantly
- Need to empty the bin often
- Motors overheat and need cooling breaks
- Noisy
- Cut
- Cross cut, never strip cut
- Capacity
- 6 sheets or more at once
- Slots
- One for credit cards
- Safety
- Auto stop when the bin is full
Related reading
Boxes of paperwork to get through?
Scanning a backlog properly, so it ends up searchable rather than a folder of images, is something I can take on.