An energy recovery ventilator (ERV) or heat recovery ventilator (HRV) runs all day and all night. That is the point of it: a tight house needs a steady trickle of fresh air, and the ventilator swaps stale indoor air for outdoor air while recovering most of the heat, and in an ERV some of the moisture. A unit that runs continuously is a unit you will hear continuously if it is loud, so noise should be one of the first things you check. The trouble is that most makers do not give you anything to check.
We read the product pages, spec sheets, submittals and manuals for current ERVs and HRVs sold in the US, and kept only noise figures the maker itself publishes. Thirteen products made the cut, from four makers. The rest of the market is in the silent aisle below.
Three yardsticks that cannot be mixed
The makers that publish use three different kinds of figure, and they cannot be ranked against each other:
- Sones at a test static pressure. This is how bathroom fans are rated under HVI 915. Panasonic rates the WhisperComfort 60 this way, at 0.1 and 0.25 inch of static pressure. VENTS-US gives the Frigate ERV 80 a sone figure at 0.2 inch too, but footnotes it as not HVI certified.
- Sones at a stated distance. VENTS-US and Blauberg rate their single-room units, and one Blauberg ducted unit, in sones at 3 ft, 10 ft, 1 m or 3 m. Distance changes the number a lot: VENTS lists the TwinFresh Expert RA1-50-2 at 0.3 sones at 10 ft and 0.6 sones at 3 ft on the same speed.
- Sound power in dB(A). Zehnder publishes the A-weighted sound power emitted by the casing, at ten airflow and pressure points. Sound power describes the source, not what you hear at a given spot, so it cannot be set against sound pressure or sones.
We never convert sones to decibels, and we never rank one yardstick against another. Within each group, we state the airflow each figure was taken at, because a figure without its airflow is close to meaningless.
Through-wall ERVs: the quietest numbers, the smallest airflow
The lowest sones-at-a-distance figures in this guide belong to through-wall units such as the VENTS-US TwinFresh range. They sit in the room, pass through a single hole in an exterior wall, and alternate direction every minute or so, storing heat in a ceramic regenerator. The TwinFresh Comfo RA1-50-2 is rated 0.2 sones at 10 ft at 12 CFM in ventilation mode.
Read the airflow carefully, though. VENTS lists two airflows for each speed: ventilation mode, and a lower regeneration mode, which is the heat recovery mode you would actually run in winter. The Comfo's top speed is 30 CFM in ventilation mode but 15 CFM in regeneration mode. The TwinFresh Expert RA1-50-2 is 9 CFM and 4 CFM at speed 1. These are single-room products, and VENTS says one Comfo can serve a room of up to 500 square feet.
There is a transparency problem here too. VENTS's TwinFresh Expert datasheets carry two tables for the same unit, and they do not agree: one gives 0.6, 1.0 and 1.2 sones at 3 ft, the other 0.3, 0.3 and 1.3 sones at a stated 0.03 inch of pressure. Blauberg North America sells a unit with identical published power, airflow and speed figures, the Vento Expert A50-1 Pro, and lists the 0.6, 1.0 and 1.2 sones with no distance at all. We quote every version on the product cards.
Panasonic's one sone table
Panasonic is the best discloser in bathroom fans, and in ERVs it publishes a sone table for exactly one product, the WhisperComfort 60. It is a good one: 0.9 sones at 40 CFM, 1.5 sones at 50 CFM and 2.5 sones at 60 CFM at 0.1 inch, plus figures at the tougher 0.25 inch pressure. It is ceiling or wall mounted with two 4 inch ducts, so it fits where a through-wall unit cannot. Panasonic states it is not for use in a bathroom.
For its larger Intelli-Balance and BalancedHome ERVs, the submittals and catalog we read contain no sone figure at all. The Intelli-Balance 100 sell sheet even quotes the ASHRAE 62.2 requirement for whole-house ventilation "with sones not to exceed 1.0", without saying how loud the Intelli-Balance itself is.
Whole-house units: Zehnder publishes, most others do not
Among ducted whole-house units, Zehnder America's ComfoAir Q guide stands out. For each of the Q350, Q450 and Q600 it prints airflow, static pressure, watts and casing sound power. The Q350 runs from 34 dB(A) at 88 cfm and 25 Pa to 52 dB(A) at 206 cfm and 200 Pa. The table also shows what duct resistance costs: at 147 cfm, the Q350 is 43 dB(A) at 100 Pa and 47 dB(A) at 200 Pa.
Two smaller ducted units carry sone figures. Blauberg's ERV EC D 130 is rated 0.6 sones at 3 m at 63 CFM and 0.2 inch, and 2.2 sones at 3 m at 116 CFM and 0.4 inch. VENTS-US lists the Frigate ERV 80 at 1.4 sones at 30 L/s and 0.2 inch.
For a ducted unit, remember that the figure describes the cabinet. What you hear in a bedroom depends mostly on the ducts: their size, length and the air speed at the registers. Build Equinox puts it plainly in its CERV FAQ: "restrictive ductwork can lead to higher air velocity resulting in more duct noise."
The silent aisle
These makers publish no noise figure on the product pages, spec sheets and manuals we read:
- Broan-NuTone. The AI Series spec sheets for the B130E65RT and B160E75RT, the BLP150E75NS-PC spec sheet and the AI Series manual give airflow and efficiency but no sones or decibels.
- Panasonic Intelli-Balance and BalancedHome. No sone figure in the submittals for the Intelli-Balance 100, 200, Elite and Elite Plus, or the BalancedHome units.
- AprilAire. The V22BEC product page, owner's manual and installation instructions carry no noise figure. Some retailer listings quote sone and dBA figures for it, but we could not find them in any AprilAire document, so we left them out.
- RenewAire. The EV Premium S, M and L submittals and the installation manual list airflow, watts and efficiency, with no sound data.
- Lifebreath. The RNC 205 page and spec sheet give no noise figure.
- Honeywell Home (Resideo). The Honeywell Home ERV page, Resideo's VNT5070E1000 and VNT5150E2000 pages, and the ventilation system owner's guide for the VNT5150 and VNT5200 give no noise figure.
- Fantech. The ATMO comparison table covers airflow, power and efficiency, with no sound data. We could not retrieve Fantech's FLEX spec sheets.
- Build Equinox. The CERV2 specifications list no noise figure; the FAQ says only that the heat pump is "designed to be whisper-quiet".
A missing figure is not proof a unit is loud. It does mean you cannot compare it, and you should ask the installer for the maker's sound data before you buy.
How to choose
Start with the job. For one or two rooms without ducts, a through-wall ERV gives you the quietest published figures, at small airflows. For a whole house, a ducted unit in a mechanical room keeps the fan out of living space, and the ductwork decides what you hear. Pick an ERV over an HRV in humid summers or very dry winters, since it also moves moisture.
Then size it so it can run at a low continuous speed. Every multi-speed unit here gets louder as airflow rises, often by a lot: the TwinFresh Expert RW1-85-2 V.2 goes from 0.5 sones at 9 CFM to 2.1 sones at 50 CFM, both at 10 ft. A unit loafing at a third of its capacity will be quieter than a smaller one flat out.
New to the units? Read sones vs decibels and what dBA means.
How we chose
We read the product pages, spec sheets, submittals and manuals of every maker named here, and used only noise figures printed in the maker's own documents, quoted with the airflow, pressure and distance the maker attached. Prices are list prices from the maker's own US store where one exists, checked on September 27, 2026. Panasonic, Zehnder and Blauberg show no prices, and we say so on each card.
We did not measure any of these ventilators. Every figure is the maker's own, quoted as published, and figures in different units or at different conditions are never ranked against each other.
