A workshop is the one room in the house where loud is normal. A dishwasher that hums at a whisper earns its place in a kitchen; nothing in a shop is sold that way. Saws, sanders, routers and hammers are loud because cutting, grinding and striking are loud, and the difference that matters is between a tool that is very loud and one that is a little less so. Over a long day of ripping, sanding or drilling, that difference is worth knowing before you buy.
This page ties our workshop guides together, arranged by the job you are doing: cutting, shaping and sanding, drilling and fastening, and the machines that handle dust and air. First, though, the one idea that runs through every one of them.
Two numbers and an uncertainty
Almost every power tool in these guides is declared under EN 62841, the European standard for electric tools, and each kind of tool has its own part. Circular saws fall under EN 62841-2-5, sanders under EN 62841-2-4, routers under EN 62841-2-17, rotary hammers under EN 62841-2-6. Every part asks the maker for the same two quantities:
- LpA, sound pressure at the operator's position. This is the figure closest to what your ears get, and the one our guides rank on.
- LWA, sound power. This is the tool's total noise output, which is what everyone else in the room or the garage gets. It is always a much higher number than LpA for the same tool.
- K, the uncertainty. Each figure comes with a K value, 3 dB for most tools here. With a K of 3, two tools a decibel or two apart may sound the same in use.
Because sound power always reads higher, a tool's LWA can never be ranked against another tool's LpA. That sounds obvious written down, but the figures are often printed side by side without a label, and on a product page a sound power figure can make a quiet machine look loud. Our explainer on sound power and sound pressure covers the two quantities in more detail. The OSHA Technical Manual puts the physics simply: sound power is the amount of energy per unit of time that radiates from a source, and as a general rule, doubling the sound power increases the noise level by 3 dB.
A second rule follows from the first. A declaration describes one standardised test for one kind of tool, so our guides compare saws with saws and sanders with sanders. Even inside one guide, figures under an older standard, figures with no standard named, and figures that name a particular job each sit in a group of their own. For where these levels sit beside everyday sounds, see our decibel chart.
Cutting
Saws produce the highest declarations in the shop, and the guides split them by what they cut and how.
Circular and track saws. Our guide to the quietest circular saws and track saws covers fourteen declared saws under EN 62841-2-5, where at the ear they run from 90 to 99 dB(A) and sound power runs from 98 to 107. It finds that the gap lines up more with maker and motor than with whether the saw runs on a track.
Table saws. Our table saw guide found only seven jobsite and compact saws with a readable maker declaration, and explains why two SawStops declared in plain dB sit in their own group rather than in the ranking.
Miter saws. Our guide to the quietest miter saws ranks fourteen saws across 8-1/2, 10 and 12 inch sizes under EN 62841-3-9, where at the ear they run from 88 to 96.2 dB(A), and shows that blade size and cord have little to do with where a saw lands.
Jigsaws and reciprocating saws. Both are declared under EN 62841-2-11, the standard for handheld reciprocating saws. Our jigsaw guide covers fifteen top handle and barrel grip models that cluster tightly, from 85 to 91 dB(A) at the ear, and explains why blade and material move real noise as much as the saw. For demolition and rough cuts, our guide to reciprocating saws sorts seventeen saws into compact, full size and corded groups, and finds that almost all of the spread follows the size of the saw.
Cutting metal. Our guide to portable band saws covers the slow, toothed loop that cuts metal with few sparks, and why its figures under the current and the older standard are never mixed. Our angle grinder guide ranks a main group of eight grinders that sit within three decibels of each other, and quotes the manuals' warning that the material can matter far more than the tool.
Plunge cuts and detail work. Our guide to oscillating multi-tools groups fourteen tools by the job each figure describes, because Makita declares sanding and sawing separately and its tools differ by up to 7 dB between those jobs.
Shaping and sanding
These are the long jobs. A saw cut lasts seconds; a routing pass or a sanding session can keep a tool running for many minutes a foot from your head.
Routers. Our guide to the quietest routers covers sixteen trim, compact and plunge routers declared under EN 62841-2-17, The eleven with figures under the current standard run from 74 to 98 dB(A) at the ear, a spread the guide finds far wider than among jigsaws or circular saws, and most of it follows the size of the tool.
Hand planers. Our hand planer guide compares twelve 3-1/4 inch planers under EN 62841-2-14, cordless and corded, and explains why sharp knives and light passes matter as much as the model.
Random orbital sanders. Our guide to random orbital sanders ranks fourteen 5 and 6 inch sanders under EN 62841-2-4. At the operator's ear they run from 68 to 89 dB(A), and sound power runs from 78 to 97. The two ranges overlap, so one sander's sound power can read like another sander's figure at the ear. Check the label before you compare.
Belt sanders. Our guide to belt sanders covers the heavy stock removal end of the same standard, from 88 to 94 dB(A) at the ear for the 3 and 4 inch sanders, with Makita's narrow detail sanders ranked only against each other.
Drilling and fastening
Drills and impact drivers. Our guide to cordless drills and impact drivers shows that the mode matters more than the brand. Turning a bit, the drills declare 64 to 80 dB(A) at the ear; switch on a hammer mode or pick up an impact driver and the figure jumps to 92 to 100. Festool prints a figure for each mode, and the T 18+3 declares 64.00 dB(A) drilling metal.
Impact wrenches. Our impact wrench guide ranks thirteen wrenches declared under the EN 62841 standards, from 91 to 101 dB(A) at the ear, keeps Milwaukee's figures with no standard named in their own group, and shows that a bigger torque rating is not always a louder tool.
Rotary hammers. Our guide to rotary hammers sorts sixteen hammers into SDS-plus, SDS-max and corded groups under EN 62841-2-6, and notes that on the makers' own figures a dust extractor adds two to four decibels on some Makitas.
Nailers. Our guide to brad and finish nailers found sixteen declarations in five different forms, cordless under EN 62841-2-16 or the older EN 60745, pneumatic under ISO 11148-13, and ranks inside each form only. A nailer is quiet between shots and sharp on each one, which makes it the hardest tool here to sum up in one number.
Dust and air
The machines in this group run alongside the tools, often for longer, and none of them is declared under EN 62841.
Dust extractors. Our guide to dust extractors covers the machine that starts when you pull the trigger on a sander and runs on for a few seconds after you let go. It is declared under EN 60335-2-69, the safety standard for commercial wet and dry vacuums, and the seven single value declarations run from 67 to 82.9 dB(A) at the operator's ear.
Shop vacuums. Our guide to wet dry shop vacs is the clearest lesson in labels on this site. Milwaukee publishes "Sound Power Level: 87 dB(A)", Makita publishes 60 dB(A) sound pressure, and those two numbers cannot be compared at all. Festool's 71 dB(A) per EN 60335-2-69, with an uncertainty of 3 dB, is higher and far better documented, and it is the figure that guide would trust.
Air compressors. Our guide to quiet air compressors works with the thinnest figures of all: of sixteen compressors, none names a test standard and only one states a distance, Campbell Hausfeld's DC080500 at 68 dBA at 3 ft. It also explains why quiet costs air, and why the CFM your tools need comes before the decibels.
How to read a declaration
Across all of these guides, the same questions sort a useful figure from a misleading one.
- Which quantity is it? LpA at the ear, or LWA for the whole tool. If the label is missing, do not rank it.
- Which standard? A figure under EN 62841 sits apart from one under the older EN 60745, and apart from one with no standard named at all.
- Which job or mode? Drilling or hammering, sanding or sawing, with or without the extractor. A figure that names no mode on a tool with several cannot be ranked with one that does.
- What is K? A gap smaller than the uncertainty is not a real gap.
- Which model? For most tools here the declaration is printed only in the maker's European documents, and our guides match each US tool to its European twin before quoting it. Tools whose US documents print nothing appear in each guide's silent aisle, which means only that their makers do not say.
What changes the noise in use
A declaration is one standardised test. The manuals are candid about what moves real noise away from it. Makita's and Bosch's grinder manuals warn that thin sheet metal can push noise up to 15 dB above the declared value. The blade, the grit, the depth of each pass and how firmly the work is clamped all appear, guide after guide, as things that matter as much as the choice of tool. And tools add up: a sander brings its extractor, an air nailer brings its compressor.
For the reference points, OSHA says exposure over 85 decibels can damage your hearing, and that if you need to raise your voice to speak to someone 3 feet away, noise levels might be over 85 decibels (dBA). NIOSH gives a recommended exposure limit of 85 dBA averaged over an eight-hour workday. The National Park Service adds a sense of scale: an increase of 10 dB causes a doubling of perceived loudness.
We did not measure any of these products. Every figure in our guides is the maker's own, quoted with the setting it describes.