Minor Drawbacks: (1) It is noisier than implied by the description "ultra-quiet". I really thought it would be very quiet. It isn't silent. Someone in the next room can definitely hear it is running, especially on wood floors. Compared to my previous small shredder, it sounds similar, or slightly better due to no stressing sounds. But I might not shred while someone is on the phone in the room out of politeness. (2) You can't fit many envelopes width-wise if you want to avoid fractional readable text appearing on the shreds, but you can just pull out the contents and drop them together. (3) It does mound up inside under the opening like any shredder, but its size gives it a lot of room before it reaches the top. (4) I went through 3 damaged units before settling on my 4th.
The first 3 units I received all had cracks in the plastic molding, one dented in on the back near the rear handle and power port. I recommend opening from the bottom and sliding off the box in a way that it would be easy to piece back together to ship back if you find a problem. Amazon was superb, quickly sending 3 in sequence until temporarily pulling the item to inspect inventory, finding no problem, and a week or two later called to send me my 4th. My 4th actually had a loose plastic screw that doesn't seem to belong to anything. But it works great, so I'm happy with it. Just inspect and exchange within the return period if you have a problem like mine. I am still happy I bought mine.