A PTAC, or packaged terminal air conditioner, is the wide, low box under the window in almost every hotel room. The same units end up in condos, sunrooms, additions and garages turned into offices, because one chassis cools, heats, and needs only a hole in an exterior wall and a 230V receptacle. If you are shopping for the narrower wall unit that plugs into a regular outlet, you want our through-the-wall air conditioner guide instead; the next section explains the difference.
The good news for a quiet shopper is that the makers who publish PTAC figures publish a lot of them: sound pressure and sound power, high and low speed, indoor and outdoor. The catch is that the boldest quiet claim in the category, GE's, comes with no operating figure at all, and neither does Amana's talk of quiet comfort.
Our picks are listed above, with full specifications for each.
A PTAC is not a through-the-wall air conditioner
They look alike, and both live in a metal sleeve in an exterior wall, but they are different machines. A PTAC sleeve is a near-universal size, about 42 inches wide and 16 inches tall: Friedrich's ZoneAire Premier chassis measures 42.1 by 16.0 by 21.5 inches, GREE's 42 by 16 by 21-1/2, ACiQ's 42.09 by 15.98 by 21.5. Through-the-wall units fit sleeves of roughly 24 to 27 inches wide. You cannot swap one for the other without cutting the wall.
The electrics differ too. Every PTAC in this guide runs on 208/230V, and several also come in 265V versions for commercial buildings. Through-the-wall units in the 8,000 BTU class plug into a standard 115V outlet. And PTACs are built to heat: each one here carries an electric strip heater, and most add a heat pump, while many wall units are cool-only.
The figures differ in kind as well. The through-the-wall makers print a single "dBA" per fan speed with no word on what it measures. PTAC makers mostly print service-manual tables that name the quantity: sound pressure or sound power. That lets us sort them properly, but it also means the numbers in the two guides are not comparable with each other.
Indoor sound pressure, dB(A). This is the closest thing to what you hear in the room, and it is where we rank. Friedrich labels its rows "Sound Pressure Level (H)" and "(L)". GREE's R32 manuals and ACiQ's manual print the values as a slash list, 50/46 or 49/48/47, without saying which speed each value belongs to, so we quote them that way and never assign a speed ourselves.
Indoor sound power, dB(A). The same three makers print this too, and it runs about ten decibels higher: 60/56 for Friedrich's and GREE's 9,000 BTU units, 59/58/57 for ACiQ's. It is a different quantity, and a lower sound power figure does not mean a lower sound pressure figure. In the 12,000 BTU class, ACiQ has the lowest sound pressure row, while Friedrich and GREE have the lowest bottom value for sound power.
Noise level, kind not stated. Perfect Aire's brochure prints "INDOOR NOISE LEVEL dB(A) (Hi/Lo)" for every model, 50/49.5 for its 9,000 BTU units. Its high and low speeds are named, but the brochure does not say whether this is sound pressure or sound power, so it sits in its own group and is ranked against nothing.
None of these makers states a measuring distance or a test standard in the tables we used.
The Friedrich and GREE twins
Put Friedrich's ZoneAire Premier R-32 service manual next to GREE's PTAC II R32 service manual and the tables line up: 9,700/9,400 Btu/h cooling for the 9,000 BTU heat pumps, EER 12.1, airflow of 330 and 282 CFM, indoor sound pressure 50 and 46, sound power 60 and 56, outdoor 62 and 58. The 12,000 and 15,000 BTU models match the same way, at 53 and 50. GREE's ETAC III R32 manual repeats the PTAC II figures again.
Neither maker explains the match, and we do not guess at it. What it means for you is simple: on paper, a Friedrich PDH09K3SGR3 and a GREE GAA09AED6NRNB5DCP are equally quiet, and the choice comes down to which dealer you can reach, the warranty, and what the installer knows. Friedrich's version is the one that labels its figures by speed; GREE's brochure puts the floor in one line, "Sound Pressure Level (Down to)" 46.
Friedrich's cheaper ZoneAire Select R-32 line also has a service manual with figures, but its table mixes cooling-mode rows with fan-mode rows marked "±2" and gives different numbers for the same fan in different rows, so we left it out rather than pick one.
ACiQ's two numbers
ACiQ sells the only PTAC here described as an inverter, and it has the most confusing paperwork. Its product page shows "Sound Level: 58 dB(A)" for the ACiQ-09PTC-INV, and its line page promises "indoor sound levels as low as 57 dB(A)". Its submittal lists "Indoor Noise level (Hi/Med/Low) dB(A) 59/58/57". All of those match the service manual's sound power row. The same manual lists sound pressure at 49/48/47.
So the 9,000 BTU ACiQ is not the loud outlier its page suggests. On sound pressure its top value, 49, is the lowest top value in the guide; its bottom value, 47, is one decibel above Friedrich's and GREE's 46. At 12,000 BTU its 51/50/49 beats the Friedrich and GREE 53/50 on sound pressure, and loses by one decibel on sound power.
The quiet claims with no numbers
GE Zoneline. GE's product guide calls Zoneline "The Quietest PTAC in the industry", footnoted to 12,000 BTU heat pump models tested at a third-party acoustical lab, and prints STC and OITC ratings, which measure how well the unit blocks outside noise rather than how loud it runs. GE's 2016 white paper goes further and charts operating sound power against Amana, LG and Friedrich, but only as gaps, "+2.1 dBA" and "+1.0 dBA", above a Zoneline bar with no value. We read GE's product guide, white paper, engineering manual and the AZ65H12DAC product page, and found no absolute operating figure.
Amana. Amana's PTAC product pages list capacity, EER and COP. Its specifications and accessories catalog mentions a "Heavy sound isolation insulation sleeve", and its brochure talks about quiet comfort. None of them prints an operating decibel figure.
Hotpoint. GE's value PTAC brand lists a "Tangential fan for air flow and smooth sound" on its AH12H12D3B page, and neither the page, the quick specs sheet nor the 2023 product guide gives a figure.
LG. We found no current LG PTAC on lg.com, only a support page for older models, so LG is not here.
Friedrich makes a similar claim, "THE QUIETEST* standard PTAC you can buy", footnoted to third-party testing against competitors. The difference is that it also publishes its own figures, so you can check them.
Sizing, circuits and sleeves
Friedrich's manual rates its 9,000 BTU models for 350 to 400 sq ft, its 12,000 BTU models for 450 to 550, and its 15,000 BTU models for 550 to 800. Perfect Aire puts its 9,000 BTU units at 300 to 400 sq ft. Within each brand, stepping up from 9,000 to 12,000 BTU adds two to four decibels to the published indoor figures, so size for the room and no bigger.
The circuit matters as much as the room. PTACs plug into 230/208V receptacles matched to the heater size: GREE's cords come in 15, 20 and 30 amp versions, with different NEMA plug shapes for each, and Perfect Aire lists 20 or 30 amp minimum circuits. A bigger heater needs a bigger circuit, and the receptacle has to match the cord.
For a replacement, measure the old sleeve before you buy. Friedrich says the ZoneAire Premier "Fits standard PTAC sleeve without the added cost of a baffle kit", and GREE says its units retrofit "most competitive wall sleeves (without a kit)". A chassis that fits its sleeve snugly, with the gasket and outdoor grille in place, leaks less sound around its edges than one shimmed into the wrong opening.
What you will pay
None of the four brands with figures shows a price on its own site. Friedrich, GREE and ACiQ send you to dealers, and Perfect Aire's product pages showed no price when we checked on September 28, 2026. We record no dealer prices, so this guide has none. Budget for the sleeve, the outdoor grille and the electrical work on top of the chassis if you are cutting a new opening.
New to these numbers? Start with dBA explained and sound power vs sound pressure, and see why you cannot compare dB ratings across brands. For a bedroom target, see how quiet is quiet enough.
How we chose
We read the service manuals, submittals, brochures and product pages that Friedrich, GREE, ACiQ and Perfect Aire publish on their own sites, and GE's, Amana's and Hotpoint's literature for the brands that publish nothing. Every figure is quoted in the maker's words with its quantity. We ranked only indoor sound pressure against indoor sound pressure, kept sound power in its own column, and kept Perfect Aire's unlabeled noise level apart from both. We did not assign a fan speed to any figure the maker left unlabeled.
We did not measure any of these units. Every number in this guide is the maker's own published figure, and where a maker publishes none, we said so instead of estimating one.
