Dryers are the least documented corner of the laundry aisle. Washing machines routinely publish wash and spin decibels, as our washing machine guide shows. Dryers get a number only when the maker builds compacts on a European platform, where energy labels have made noise declaration a habit.
The result: ten dryers with maker published figures, every one a 24 inch compact, spanning 62 to 67 dBA.
The full size silence
No 27 inch dryer from any maker carries a figure. LG's spec sheets print "LoDecibel Quiet Operation" without a decibel. Samsung's US spec PDFs, Whirlpool's specification sheet for its ventless heat pump model, GE Profile's combo documents, Maytag's pages and Miele's US fact sheets all publish nothing. That is the familiar pattern from our hair dryer and litter box guides: the biggest names trademark quietness instead of measuring it in public.
Miele deserves a special mention because it does declare sound power for its EU dryers. But the EU model numbers differ from the US ones, so no figure can be carried across the way we did for some projectors, and Miele US publishes none.
How to read a dryer decibel
Every figure in this guide is a bare dBA. No maker names a standard, a distance, or whether the number is sound power or sound pressure, and only ASKO names the cycle, labeling its figure "Noise level drying". The Beko group, which owns Beko and Blomberg, declares sound power in dB(A) re 1 pW on its EU energy labels, so its US numbers are probably the same quantity. Sound power figures run higher than sound pressure readings for the same machine, which is one reason a 62 dBA dryer and a 40 dBA dishwasher are not the comparison they appear to be. The mechanics are in our sound power vs sound pressure explainer.
Within this guide the numbers are at least the same kind of disclosure from the same kind of platform, and the spread is real: Bosch's heat pumps at 62, ASKO and the best Blomberg at 65, Beko at 66, the vented Beko and Bosch's non heat pump condensation dryer at 67.
Bosch publishes "Silence level 62 dBA" for both its 500 Series and 800 Series heat pump compacts, which share the 4.0 cubic foot drum. The 800 Series costs $600 more and was the one in stock when we checked. By Bosch's own numbers the premium buys features, not quiet, the same pattern as AC Infinity's fan controllers in our inline duct fan guide.
The vented question
Two vented dryers publish figures, and both are compacts: ASKO's T411VD.W at 65 and Beko's BDV7200X2 at 67. Anyone hoping to compare a quiet vented full size machine against a heat pump one is out of data entirely. ASKO's own pair is the cleanest comparison in the category, 65 for the heat pump and 65 for the vented model, from the only maker that labels the cycle.
What we could not verify
Equator dryers carry "under 60 dB" claims on Amazon and Walmart listings, but Equator's own site publishes no noise spec on any dryer page, so those numbers have no maker source and are excluded. Fisher and Paykel's US dryer pages returned server errors on every attempt. Summit's site blocked retrieval. Blomberg's figures are published on its product pages, but its documents are mid rename between DHP and BLH model prefixes, which we flag on the affected picks.
We did not measure any of these dryers. Every figure is the maker's own, quoted as published, with the condition attached wherever the maker attached one, which in this category is almost nowhere.
