A chainsaw near the property line has an audience. Storm cleanup happens when everyone is home, firewood gets cut on weekends, and pruning is often done in the morning before it gets hot. Electric saws change the sound of those jobs, but less than the word "quiet" on a product page suggests, and in ways that only show up when you read the makers' declarations closely.
This guide ranks battery and corded saws for homeowners with houses nearby. Our main chainsaw guide covers the whole field, including the figures STIHL leaves out of its North American manuals. Here we narrow it to the saws a homeowner would buy, and ask what each number means for the people on the other side of the fence.
Two numbers, two audiences
Every declaration we use has up to two quantities. LpA is the sound pressure at the operator's ear: what you hear. LWA is the sound power, the total noise the saw puts out: what the street hears. The guaranteed LWA under the EU outdoor noise directive, 2000/14/EC, is a ceiling the maker promises no unit will exceed.
We rank LpA against LpA and LWA against LWA, and never one against the other. Within LpA we also keep the test apart. STIHL and Makita name EN 62841-4-1. Husqvarna's US pages and EGO's European manuals give no test for the ear figure, so those saws form a second group. Our sound power vs sound pressure explainer covers why the two quantities cannot be mixed.
The ranking at your ear
Under EN 62841-4-1, rear handle saws we could tie to a US model: STIHL MSA 60 C-B and MSA 70 C-B at 83 dB(A); MSA 80 C-B and MSA 160 C-B at 85; Makita XCU11Z at 89; STIHL MSA 220 C-B at 91; Makita XCU04Z at 92; Makita GCU05Z at 94; Makita UC4051A, corded, at 95. STIHL's MSA 300 declares 93 or 96 depending on generation.
With no test named: Husqvarna 125i Power Axe at 84; EGO CS1401 and CS1604 at 85.4; Husqvarna 225i Power Axe and EGO CS2005 at 89; Husqvarna Power Axe 350i at 91; EGO CS1611 at 91.25.
Every figure here carries a K, the maker's stated uncertainty, of 2 to 3 dB(A) where one is given. Saws a decibel or two apart may sound alike in use. The larger gaps are real: twelve decibels separate the MSA 60 from the UC4051A under the same test.
The neighborhood number
Guaranteed sound power under 2000/14/EC, for the saws whose makers name the directive: STIHL MSA 60 and MSA 80 at 97 dB(A); MSA 70 and MSA 160 at 98; EGO CS1401 and CS1604 at 99; EGO CS1815 at 102; EGO CS1611 at 103; STIHL MSA 220 at 104; EGO CS2005 at 105.
Husqvarna prints a guaranteed figure on its US pages without naming the directive: 95 for the 125i, 100 for the 225i and 102 for the 350i. We list those separately. Makita's manuals print no guaranteed value in their text, so for Makita we have only the measured LWA under EN62841-4-1: 97 for the XCU11Z twin up to 103 for the UC4051A.
Roughly every 10 decibels sounds twice as loud. A saw guaranteed at 97 against one at 105 is not a small difference to the house next door. Our quiet yard explainer sets these figures beside the mowers and blowers your neighbors also hear.
How much quieter than gas, by the makers' own terms
We compare battery and gas only where one maker prints both figures in the same terms. STIHL declares its gas MS 250 at a guaranteed 114 dB(A) under 2000/14/EC Annex V, and its battery MSA 60 at 97 under the same annex: 17 decibels. STIHL's ear figures for the two use different tests, ISO 22868 for the gas saw and EN 62841-4-1 for the battery one, so we do not subtract them.
Husqvarna's US pages use the same labels for gas and battery. Its quietest gas saw at the ear, the 16 inch 120, prints 95 dB(A) and a guaranteed 116. The 125i Power Axe prints 84 and 95, and the 14 inch 225i Power Axe 89 and 100. For top handles, the gas T525 prints 98 and 111 against 91 and 104 for the battery T542i XP. Our Husqvarna decibels page lists every Husqvarna saw with a figure.
Between cuts: the part neighbors notice
Storm cleanup is mostly not cutting. You move a limb, drag brush, reposition, and cut again. What a saw does in those gaps matters as much as its figure under load.
STIHL's MSA 60 manual says: "Release the trigger. The chain stops rotating." Its gas MS 250 manual asks you to "Check for correct idling, so that the saw chain stops moving when the throttle trigger is released", because the engine keeps running. Husqvarna's 125i page describes "automatic shutdown after 180s if left unattended", and its T542i XP shuts down "after 3 minutes of being idle". Makita lists an electric brake on the XCU04Z and an "Electric chain brake" with soft start on the corded UC4051A.
No maker publishes an idle figure for these saws, so we cannot rank what you hear between cuts. But a motor that stops has nothing to declare.
Chain speed and bar length
Within each maker's own range, the faster and bigger saws declare more. Makita's slowest chain, 7.7 m/s on the XCU11Z twin, comes with its lowest ear figure, 89; the 20 m/s XCU04Z twin declares 92 and the 25.5 m/s GCU05Z twin 94. STIHL's MSA 60 runs 14.0 m/s and declares 83; the MSA 160 runs 16.3 m/s and declares 85; the MSA 220, on 3/8 inch chain at 23.3 m/s, declares 91.
The practical rule is to buy the smallest bar that handles your wood. A 12 inch bar covers most storm limbs and pruning. A 14 inch handles most firewood rounds. An 18 or 20 inch saw adds noise you will hear on every cut, and the declarations bear that out. A slower chain also means longer cuts, so the quiet saw runs for more of the job.
Corded is not quieter
A corded saw has no battery to run down, which makes it tempting for a long firewood day. It does not make it quiet. Makita's UC4051A declares 95 dB(A) at the ear under EN62841-4-1, more than any battery saw under that test here apart from the newer generation of STIHL's MSA 300, at 96. It is the only corded saw we could tie to a declaration under its own US model number.
Top handle or rear handle
Top handle saws are compact, but they are built for trained arborists working in trees. STIHL's MSA 190 T declares 91 dB(A) at the ear and a guaranteed 101, more than the rear handle MSA 160 on both. STIHL's warranty policy offers top handle MSA-T saws no consumer warranty. For work from the ground, a rear handle saw is the one the makers intend, and in these declarations the quieter choice too. For branches overhead, our pole saw guide ranks pruners that keep the motor at the top of the shaft.
The hearing protection the makers require
Every maker here tells you to protect your ears. STIHL: "STIHL recommends wearing ear defenders." Makita: "WARNING: Wear ear protection." EGO: "Wear safety glasses and hearing protection." Milwaukee: "Wear ear protectors!" STIHL's gas manual goes further and says to wear "personal" hearing protection, for example ear defenders. An 83 dB(A) battery saw is quieter than gas, not quiet.
Claims without conditions, and saws we could not map
Some makers describe noise without a number. EGO's US page says the CS1604 "delivers the performance of gas without the noise, fuss and fumes". Makita's US pages promise "low noise levels". Greenworks lists "Quiet Operation". None of these comes with a figure, a distance or a test, so none is ranked. Our EGO decibels page gathers what EGO does declare in Europe.
Milwaukee's European manual for the 35 cm M18 FCHS35 declares 77.67 dB(A) sound pressure and 97.69 dB(A) sound power under EN 62841, with a guaranteed 100 under 2000/14/EC. Milwaukee's US saw is the 16 inch 2727, whose European twin page printed no figure, and its US chain speed of 12.7 m/s does not match the 12.4 of the European saws. So we do not carry the figure over. DEWALT's European DCM565 declares 89.5 dB(A) and a guaranteed 102.0, but its 7.3 m/s chain speed did not match what we could find for the US DCCS620. Ryobi and Oregon print no figure on the US pages we checked, and Worx's US pages did not load for us.
The trade-offs
Quiet costs capacity. The quietest saws here carry 12 inch bars and slower chains, so a big round takes longer, and battery runtime limits a long session. STIHL sells through dealers only, and Husqvarna marks the 125i for in-store purchase. EGO and Makita figures come from European manuals mapped to US models by bar, pitch and chain speed. Wherever a mapping rests on an older manual, as with EGO's CS1604, we say so.
We did not measure any of these chainsaws. Every figure is the maker's own, quoted as published from a manual, declaration or product page, with the test, K value and directive identified wherever the maker identified them, and the evidence for each model mapping recorded in its catalog entry.
