Review Of The TruBind S20A Coil Binding Machine

Review Of The TruBind S20A Coil Binding Machine

I am one of those Amazon shoppers that place items in the cart to be reviewed for sometimes weeks before I press that final buy button. And when it came to selecting a binding machine, it was no different.

I have been trying to decide between a comb binding or coil binding machine for a while. After thinking for too long and asking too many questions, I finally decided upon the TrueBind S20A Coil Binding Machine. My decision to go with the slightly more expensive coil machine was based on the experience I had last year having had books bound at Office Depot. They held up well for the entire school year.

It is a straightforward and sleek machine, with just enough features, to give the results of some professionally bounded books or other printables. (Because now all loose paper in this house is being bound ).

As one of the newest additions to my stash of homeschool necessities, honestly, I don’t know why it took me so long to get a binding machine. That said, I am happy with this machine.

You can find it here.

The good…

Very simple set up
It is well constructed, made of metal.
Even though made of metal, It weighs 16″ 56 pounds without the cord and 16″ 12.7 pounds with the cord, (give or take), which is not too bad in my opinion. This is without packaging.

Mostly manual (you can choose to or not use the electrical coil inserter).
The product comes with a two-year warranty.
The machine comes with coil crimper included.
The coil inserter works excellent for unbinding books (once you straighten the crimped end of course) to allow for adding additional pages!
The punched holes lines up correctly making it very easy to insert the coils manually if you wanted to choose that option.
Although you have a learning curve, the process is straightforward and efficient after that.
Once your book is bound and adequately crimped, you can open your books and fold over to lay flat. This was probably the most critical feature for me.

The not so good…

The electric coil inserter is honestly unnecessary. So you can save around $50.00 bucks!
This version is a bit pricey.
The suggested ability to punch 20 pages is honestly too much. It’s more 10-15 pages.
The operation guide will not be enough to get from unboxing to binding your first book.
You do not get any sample coils. Thus you at least need coils to be able to bind your first book.
You will need to do some practice before punching your first book. I have found there is a bit of a learning curve. Please see my detailed video below.
The slide guide is made of plastic that has a bit of a wiggle to it. I have found that you have to put tension, pushing it inwards, to get your punched paper to line up. Again, please see my video below where I demonstrated this.

Conclusions…

If I had to choose all over again, I would still buy this machine. However, I would recommend the version without the coil inserter only because it sometimes does feel more of novelty feature those times when it doesn’t work. But again, I chose it because I wanted the option to use it since I know I will be binding a lot more than just our books in the near foreseeable future. So I wanted the option of having the sometimes useful help of the inserter.