Product Review: Xyron ezLaminator

I've mentioned my ezLaminator in several posts now so I thought I should write a short Product Review about it.  So here goes...

I got my ezLaminator as a gift from my mom.  I'd been thinking about getting a laminator but I was looking at heated/electric ones and at the time they were way out of my budget.  At the time (this is probably close to 8 years ago), I think my mom paid around $50 for it (I'll post some links to ones on Amazon so you can get an idea of current prices).  As you can tell from some of my previous posts, I still use it quite a bit.  I laminate most of the bookmarks I make, flashcards, and the decorations I make from old calendar pages for our Sukkah in the fall.

The Xyron ezLaminator is a cold seal laminator.  It doesn't use electricity to run - it's a hand crank.  And it doesn't use heat, which is nice if you want to laminate something that already has a little bit of coating on it so it doesn't melt it and distort the image.  The cold seal is basically a very strong adhesive (at least to itself and to paper). 

Likes:

• Quick & convenient
• No electric & no heat
• Easy to use

Dislikes:

• Sticker based so it leaves my scissors with sticky goo to remove
• Refill cartridges are often difficult to find in retail stores or a little pricier (haven't done the cost comparison but it might actually be less expensive to just take my lamination pieces to OfficeMax and have them done there)
• Size limitation (sometimes old calendar images are larger than what I can feed through the machine)

Links:

• Xyron ezLaminator on Amazon
• Refill packet on Amazon