Two makers name a measuring distance
Anycubic and Creality put the microphone 1 meter from the printer, and they are the only two that say where it stood.
Anycubic's footnote reads: "The data provided is measured at 1 meter away from the front of the printer. Due to individual machine differences, the actual noise level may deviate from the advertised value, which is considered normal." Creality prints "Measured at 1-meter distance, data from Creality Lab" beside the Ender-3 V3 Plus figure.
That is the whole list. Elegoo, FlashForge and Bambu Lab attach no distance to their numbers, and not one 3D printer maker cites a standard such as ISO 7779 for its test. A 44 dB claim from one brand and 45 dB from another are therefore not really a decibel apart, and our explainer on why such claims cannot be lined up as a real decibel gap covers the reasons at length. Paper printers are better documented, since Xerox and Canon both cite ISO 7779, as our printer guide shows.
Elegoo takes a different route. Instead of a distance it publishes the test state: PLA filament, silent mode, auxiliary part cooling fan off. You could match those conditions at home, which a bare number never lets you do.
Are enclosed 3D printers quieter?
Partly. The enclosed printers here publish 44 to 50 dB and the open frame ones 48 to 55, which fits the intuition.
Bambu Lab breaks the pattern completely. It prints a figure for the open frame A1 and A1 mini and nothing for the enclosed P1S, X1 Carbon or H2D, the reverse of what a maker would do if the enclosure were the selling point.
Heat makes things worse. Anycubic's Kobra S1 Max is up to 48 dB in standard mode and 45 in quiet mode, then "55dB (with chamber heating enabled)". Chamber heating is the setting for ABS and ASA. Switch it on and the quiet enclosed printer becomes the loudest machine in this guide, at exactly the moment you use the feature you bought it for.
How much slower is a 3D printer's silent mode?
Five makers publish a silent or quiet mode figure, and not one prints the speed it costs in a specification table.
Creality's closest line, "In silent mode, the printing noise is greatly reduced", describes the noise and leaves speed out. Elegoo's blog is the nearest thing to an answer: a print of about six hours on the original Centauri Carbon that "might stretch closer to ten hours" in silent mode, offered as a worked example rather than a specification. Elegoo's Centauri Carbon 2 figure also comes with the auxiliary part cooling fan switched off. That condition has a real cost, because part cooling affects print quality on overhangs, and it is the kind of trade a silent mode figure hides.
Between two printers a decibel apart by the spec sheet, the missing speed figure will decide more than the decibel does.
Projectors share the blind spot. Our projector guide found Epson publishing a 9 dB gap between its Quiet and Normal modes, and no maker saying how much light the quiet mode costs.
Printers that publish no noise level
Some brands print nothing, and some spec tables carry an empty row.
Prusa publishes nothing
There is no figure for the CORE One, the MK4S or the MINI, on the product pages or in the Knowledge Base. Owners describe Prusa as quiet more often than any other brand, yet every number in circulation comes from a reviewer.
Some rows are left blank
The non-Pro FlashForge Adventurer 5M has a Noise row containing "/". Anycubic's Kobra 3 V2 has one containing a dash, while the FAQ on the same site says "approximately 55dB".
Elegoo and Anycubic both publish figures for their filament machines and neither publishes one for the Mars, Jupiter or Photon lines. This guide has no resin section for that reason alone.
