Amazon Basics 12-Inch Thermal Laminator Machine, White

I love that Amazon is doing a "basics" line because that is exactly what this product is. I lovethe look and that it will fit almost anywhere to store. This is nothing fancy it does exactly what is states without any of the frills and confusing messes that are a lot of machines these days.I was making quite a few things for the boy scouts and I wanted to make sure that what they had was something they could always keep with them no matter the weather. They do a lot of camping, fishing, hiking just a lot of outdoor activities and it is nice to have their paper items that they have to have on them be protected against all the elements.The laminator does a great job, I didn't have any problems with bubbles, paper jams, or any of the other things that my old one gave me problems with. It does a great job with the most basic and simple instructions.I did notice that if I left it on for a long period of time that it did not want to accept the page but if I unplugged it then plugged it back in it seemed to work just fine, I did well over 150 pages in one sitting back to back and only had to reset it once and that was about 45- 50 pages in and then after that it was fine so that would be my only complaint and I really cant justify taking a star away just because of the very small issue that I had.Over all this is a very well made item that is inexpensive for the common person to grab for whatever the reason they need it for, I am about to laminate the directions on our favorite games so that I never have to go on a hunt to find them online!

I ordered the AmazonBasics laminator long ago, but finally had the opportunity to start using it. It works great and has provided an easy and flawless experience thus far. Plug it in, stick whatever your laminating in the pouch, and insert it into the laminator. That's all there is to it.The laminator can handle two pouch thicknesses - 3mm and 5mm. I've only used the 5mm pouches and can't comment on the difference in quality between the two. The 5mm thickness gives the item your laminating a sturdy, but flexible feel. If using a driver's license as a comparison, it would be a little less rigid than that.After turning on the laminator and switching it to the 5mm option it takes about a minute to warm up and give you the green light to go ahead. While laminating back to back items the green light will go off for a bit and then back on. I assume this is do to a drop in temperature while the lamination process is taking place. When I saw it happen the first time I was worried that the quality of the lamination would decrease. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it did not. If there was a temperature drop, it wasn't big enough to effect the quality.The body of the unit does get warm to the touch. I would suggest a flat, hard surface with some space around to let the heat move away from the machine. The items being laminated come out almost cool to the touch. A little warm, but not much at all. That was a surprising and positive quality to the laminator as well.I'm extremely pleased with the purchase. I would recommend this laminator to anyone and tell you to buy it with confidence. It does the job, produces quality laminations, and is inexpensive.

I have an Etsy shop and one of the products I carry is gold foil prints. I purchased this laminator after I got tired of dealing with the "professional" laminator I had been using for the past 9 months, which incidentally, I also purchased from Amazon, for nearly 7 times the cost of this one. I was tired of the noise, not only from normal function of the rollers turning, but also from the squeaking, as well as the occasional "grinding" noise that would occur whenever the rollers got stuck. I was tired of having to keep the machine on for what seemed like forever to let the rollers cool down afterward. I was tired of it taking up so much precious real estate in my work area with its gigantic foot print. Not to mention the fact that getting a good, solid, gold foil print would almost always take me dozens of tries before I could get one without a lot of black spots (if you've ever tried foiling, you know what I'm talking about!).Enter the AmazonBasics Thermal Laminator, which just arrived today. I had my doubts because of the incredibly low price tag, but I was ready to try something else and couldn't wait to give this one a try.THE FOOTPRINT:The first thing I noticed is that this thing is really, really small. It has such a tiny footprint (about 13" wide by 4.5" deep), I'll definitely be able to find a permanent place for it in my workspace.HOW LOUD IS IT?The second thing I noticed is that it's SO quiet! I was worried at first that it wasn't working because all I could hear was a very quiet hum after I turned it on, but as I discovered, it works perfectly fine.THE S.L.O.W. FEEDIt really does feed very S.L.O.W.L.Y., as others have pointed out. Much, much more slowly than the other one I have. I'll comment more on that later.HOW DOES IT PERFORM (specifically for gold foiling):I haven't tried it yet for laminating, so I can't speak to that, but as far as the foiling goes, I put it on the 5mil setting, as recommended by others, and let it warm up for about 15 minutes. The first couple of prints came out beautifully, except for a few black spots here and there. Probably my fault, because I was relying on some tricks I had learned from my previous laminator (use sticky notes at the top of the print to hold the foil in place). The black spots occurred only over the sticky notes. So the third time, I ditched the sticky notes and tried one of the other tricks I learned, which is to fold a narrow strip of paper (about 1" in width) in half and place it over the leading edge of the print, sandwiching the print and the foil together so they feed into the laminator evenly. This time, the results were perfect. No black spots whatsoever. Not sure if I just got lucky, but I'm very optimistic, given the way the two previous prints turned out. I suspect that because the print feeds so slowly through the laminator, the toner reactive foil spends more time under the heat, and seems to adhere better to the print. It may take it longer to feed a single print through than my other laminator, but if I only have to do it once, then I've definitely saved a considerable amount of time. Also, I'm thrilled to be able to just turn it off when I'm done, instead of having to wait for it to cool down. I'm still going to have to keep my other laminator for wider prints (Amazon, please make one that will accommodate widths up to 18"!) but I am so happy I gave this one a shot. It will be the only laminator I'll use from now on for smaller gold foil prints. And if it quits working in 6 months, I can buy another one (or two, or three!) and I'm still way, way ahead on the price of the other one. Oh, and I'll come back and post an update if I discover that the perfect print I achieved was just beginner's luck.