A washer dryer combo is the laundry machine an apartment is often designed around. There is no vent to the outside, no 240-volt dryer outlet, and room for one 24-inch machine in a closet off the hall. The trouble is that the closet usually sits beside a bedroom, above someone else's ceiling, or both, and a combo spins as fast as a standalone front loader. In a house, that is a basement noise. In a flat, it is your neighbor's noise.
This guide picks up where our main guide to washer dryer combos leaves off. That guide covers who prints a figure at all. Here we read the same makers' documents for the things an apartment needs: the figure for the phase that travels through a floor, the program you would run at night, the delay start that decides when the spin lands, and the floor and closet advice in the installation manuals.
Our picks are listed above, with full specifications for each.
The noise that reaches the flat below is the spin
A wash is a drum turning slowly through water. A spin is the same drum at 1,200 to 1,400 rpm, with a wet load that is rarely perfectly balanced. On the washers where a maker publishes both halves, the spin is far louder: our guide to the quietest washing machine for an apartment found Bosch's compact washers 20 to 24 dBA louder spinning than washing. That gap, and the vibration that comes with it, is what a neighbor below hears.
So we looked for a spin figure on every combo we could find from LG, GE Profile, Samsung, Equator, Midea, Whirlpool, Haier, KoolMore, Danby, Magic Chef and Summit. We found none. The figures that do exist describe something else.
A wash figure. Midea's Canadian page lists "Wash Noise Level 63 dBA" for the MLC31N5AWW, a 3.1 cu ft ventless combo. It is the only A-weighted figure for a combo's wash we found in North America.
A program figure. Equator lists 60 dB for a program it calls Quiet on its 24-inch combos. The EZ 4700 C spec sheet says: "Quiet Cycle: Clothes are washed and dried at low RPM with noise level less 60 dB." It is not a wash figure or a spin figure, and it has no A-weighting or distance.
A figure with no cycle. KoolMore prints "Noise 78 dB" and says nothing about which phase it describes.
Our rule is to rank a wash only against a wash and a spin only against a spin, within the same size group. With one wash figure and no spin figures, there is nothing to rank against anything. That is why the picks above are chosen on the installation and the controls, and why no pick here is called the quietest combo. If the difference between dB and dBA is new to you, our dBA explainer covers it.
The European brands on many apartment shortlists, Miele, Bosch, ASKO and Beko, publish spin figures for their washer dryers in Europe because the EU label requires one. Miele's information sheet for the WTR860WPM, a European model, lists "Airborne acoustical noise emissions during the spinning phase" as 69 dB(A) re 1 pW, under Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/2014. That is sound power, a different quantity from the dB figures above, so it cannot be compared with them even in principle.
We found no combo from Bosch on its US site, and Miele's, ASKO's and Beko's US sites refused our requests, so we cannot confirm what those brands sell here. The same Miele sheet makes another point worth knowing before you buy any combo: on the wash and dry cycle the EU label is based on, a full rated load takes 6:29 by its figures, against 3:59 for a half load.
Cycle length, and when the spin lands
A combo trades a second machine for time. The Equator manual's program chart gives the Normal program 51 minutes of washing at 1,200 rpm and up to 90 minutes of drying. GE says its heat pump Combo will "Wash + Dry a load in just a couple hours," and that the time adjusts with load size and how well the load spins out.
That changes how you use a delay start. With a separate washer, a timer that finishes the cycle at 7 a.m. puts the spin at 7 a.m. With a combo, the spin comes at the end of the wash portion, and then the dryer phase runs on, quieter but long. On Equator's Normal chart, that means the spin lands about an hour after the start. Count from your start time, not your finish time.
Most of these combos have the control. Equator lists Delay Start on the EZ 4700 C spec sheet. Midea lists Delay and Delay Start. LG lists Delay Wash. GE allows a delay of up to 24 hours in 15-minute steps, and Samsung lists Delay End. KoolMore's manual gives 0 to 24 hours. The one we could not confirm is the Equator EZ 6500, whose manual does not mention it.
Two smaller things matter after dark. Midea lists a No buzzer function, and GE says control sounds can be turned on or off. And GE's Wrinkle Care option tumbles the load on and off for 8 hours after the cycle, which is useful on a busy morning and something to turn off before bed.
The slow program is the real quiet feature
Equator's Quiet program is quiet at least partly because it spins slower. The manual chart lists it as a cold wash at 800 rpm for 41 minutes, with 80 minutes of drying, where Normal spins at 1,200. The spec sheet aims it at "families working in different shifts, babies and seniors," which describes most apartment buildings.
Other makers let you do the same thing by hand. LG lists five spin speeds down to No Spin, and Midea lists five spin selections. A lower spin leaves the load wetter, and in a combo that load goes straight into the dryer phase, so expect a longer dry. It is the same trade our compact washers guide describes for standalone machines, made inside one drum.
Floors, feet and shipping bolts
None of the manuals or spec sheets we read recommends anti-vibration pads. What they ask for is a hard, rigid, level floor.
Rigid. LG says to install on a floor "strong and rigid enough to support the weight of the washing machine, even when fully loaded, without flexing or bouncing," and that "If the floor is not solid, it may cause severe vibration and noise." GE says to make sure the Combo does not vibrate or move, "you may have to reinforce the floor."
Hard. GE says not to install the Combo on carpet, and KoolMore's manual says the same. In a condo with carpeted closets, that is a conversation for the building before delivery day.
Level. GE says to push and pull on opposite corners and adjust the rubber leveling legs until all four touch the floor, with the lock nuts tightened. Equator says the machine must be "perfectly level". LG allows no more than 1 inch of slope front to back or side to side.
Bolts out. The Equator manual linked from the EZ 6500 pages says the drum is held with 4 shipping bolts, and that "Failure to remove shipping bolts may cause severe vibration, noise and can lead to permanent damage to the machine." The EZ 4700 C spec sheet lists 2 shipping rods. Either way, this is the first thing to check if a new combo shakes.
And leave the machine room to move. GE's manual says the Combo "is designed to move 1/4" to reduce forces transmitted to the floor." KoolMore asks for 0.98 inches on all sides to reduce noise transfer, Danby 2.5 cm and Magic Chef 1 inch. A cabinet built tight around a combo removes that space.
24 inches or full size, and the outlet
The compact combos here hold 1.62 to 3.1 cu ft, and those whose width we could read are 23.5 to 24 inches wide. All run on a standard 110 to 120V supply. That fits the closets apartments are usually built with, and the published figures, such as they are, all belong to these small machines.
The full-size heat pump combos from GE and Samsung hold 4.8 and 5.3 cu ft, are 28 and 27 inches wide, and also run on 120V. None publishes a figure. They do spell out closets: GE asks for a door with at least 60 square inches of open area, and Samsung for two openings totaling 72 square inches when the combo shares the space with another machine. Those openings let the heat pump breathe, and they also let sound out.
Neither size needs a 240-volt outlet, which is a real advantage over the stacked pairs in our compact dryers guide when the closet only has a standard plug. Our page on keeping an apartment quiet covers how laundry fits with the other machines that share a small home's walls.
The trade-offs
A figure or a big drum. Every figure here belongs to a compact combo of 3.1 cu ft or less. If you need full-size loads, you are buying on documentation, not a number.
A slow spin or a short dry. The Quiet program and low spin settings are kinder to the flat below and leave more water for the dryer phase to remove.
A night cycle or a quiet night. Delay start lets you run laundry while you sleep. Set it so the spin lands when your neighbors are awake.
A Canadian figure or a US model. The only wash figure belongs to a model on Midea's Canadian site. Midea's US combo shows no figure.
How we chose
We read each maker's product page and the spec sheet, owner's manual or installation instructions we could open, from the US site where one exists and the Canadian site for Midea. We recorded every noise figure in the maker's own words with the phase or program it names, and kept wash, program and unnamed figures apart. We read every delay, spin speed and sound setting, and every line about floors, feet, shipping bolts and clearances. Whirlpool's US site and Miele's, ASKO's and Beko's US sites refused our requests, so we could not check their pages.
With no spin figures to rank, we chose on what the documents support for an apartment: a program or setting you can run at night, a delay start, a ventless install, a standard outlet, and clear floor guidance. Each award is true within its stated group.
We did not measure any of these combos. Every figure in this guide is the maker's own, quoted from its documents, and the picks describe what makers publish, not how loud the machines were in an apartment we lived in.
