Festool declares its ETSC 125 sander at 68.00 dB(A) at the operator's ear and its TS 60 KEB track saw at 90.00. The saw is far louder, yet the sander is the one that stays running a foot from your head for many minutes while a saw cut is over in seconds. How long a tool runs shapes a day in the shop as much as the figure on its declaration.
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, so the real choice 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 choice sets your workshop noise levels, and it is worth knowing before you buy.
This page ties our guides to a quieter workshop together by job: cutting, shaping and sanding, drilling and fastening, and the machines that handle dust and air. One idea runs through every one of them, and it comes first.
LpA, LWA and K, the three parts of a declaration
Almost every power tool in these guides is declared under EN 62841, the European standard for electric tools, and each kind of tool gets a part of the standard to itself. 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 plus an uncertainty.
| Symbol | What it is | Who it describes |
|---|---|---|
| LpA | Sound pressure at the operator's position | The person holding the tool; our guides rank on this one |
| LWA | Sound power, the tool's total noise output | Everyone else in the room or the garage; always a much higher number than LpA for the same tool |
| K | The uncertainty attached to each figure | 3 dB for most tools here |
With K at 3, a saw or sander declared one or two decibels under another can be no quieter in practice.
Because sound power always reads higher, a tool's LWA can never be ranked against another tool's LpA. Written down, that looks obvious. On a product page the two figures are often printed side by side with no label, and 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 defines sound power as the amount of energy per unit of time that radiates from a source, and gives a rule of thumb: twice the sound power raises 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, and even inside one guide, figures under an older standard, figures with no standard named and figures tied to a particular job each sit in a group of their own. To set a saw's or grinder's dB(A) against household and street sounds, use our decibel chart.
Nine workshop machines and what their makers declare
A home workshop holds three groups of machines: cutting tools, finishing tools, and the machines that move dust and air. Each row below takes one example from our guides, with its declared figure and the test it names.
| Machine | How long it runs | Figure to look for | Example from our guides |
|---|---|---|---|
| Circular or track saw | Seconds per cut | LpA under EN 62841-2-5 | Festool TS 60 KEB: 90.00 dB(A), K 3, LWA 101.00 |
| Miter saw | Seconds per cut | LpA under EN 62841-3-9 | Bosch GCM18V-12GDCN: 88 dB(A), K 3, LWA 103 |
| Router | Minutes per pass | LpA under EN 62841-2-17 | Bosch GKF12V-25N: 74 dB(A), K 3 |
| Random orbital sander | Long sessions | LpA under EN 62841-2-4 | Festool ETSC 125: 68.00 dB(A), K 3, LWA 79.00 |
| Cordless drill | Short bursts | LpA for the mode you use | Festool T 18+3: 64.00 dB(A) drilling metal, K 5 |
| Brad nailer | One shot at a time | The form of the declaration | Makita XNB01Z: 79 dB(A), K 3, EU manual for the DBN500 |
| Dust extractor | Alongside each tool | LpA under EN 60335-2-69 | Festool CTC MIDI I: 67 dB(A), K 3 |
| Shop vac | Cleanup | Any figure with a standard | Festool CT 26 EI HEPA: 71 dB(A), EN 60335-2-69 |
| Air compressor | Cycles for hours | A figure with a distance | California Air Tools 8010: 60 dB, distance not stated |
Set a row only against tools under the same standard. The saw, router, sander and drill rows share the EN 62841 family, but each part runs its own test, and the extractor, shop vac and compressor rows use other standards or none.
Plan by the middle column. An extractor or compressor runs for as long as the tool it serves.
How loud are saws and other cutting tools?
Saws produce the highest declarations in the shop, and the guides split them by what they cut and how.
Fourteen declared saws sit in our guide to the quietest circular saws and track saws, all under EN 62841-2-5. At the ear they run from 90 to 99 dB(A), sound power from 98 to 107, and maker and motor explain the spread better than track or no track.
Among jobsite and compact saws, our table saw guide could read a maker declaration for just seven, and explains why two SawStops declared in plain dB sit in their own group rather than in the ranking.
Blade size and cord have little to do with where a miter saw lands. Our guide to the quietest miter saws ranks fourteen of them, in 8-1/2, 10 and 12 inch blade sizes, under EN 62841-3-9, with operator figures from 88 to 96.2 dB(A).
Jigsaws share a standard with recip saws: EN 62841-2-11, written for handheld reciprocating saws. Our jigsaw guide covers fifteen top handle and barrel grip models packed into a narrow band, with ear-level declarations between 85 and 91 dB(A), and explains why the blade and the workpiece change what you hear about as much as the saw itself does. For demolition and rough cuts, the 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 with band saws and angle grinders
Portable band saws cut metal with a slow, toothed loop and few sparks; that guide explains why their figures under the current and the older standard are never mixed.
Our angle grinder guide ranks a main group of eight grinders spread across no more than three decibels, and quotes the manuals' warning that the material can count for far more than the tool.
Plunge cuts and detail work
On one Makita multi-tool, sanding and sawing are declared as much as 7 dB apart. Our guide to oscillating multi-tools sorts fourteen tools by the job behind each figure for exactly that reason.
Routers, planers and sanders run the longest
These are the long jobs. A routing pass or a sanding session keeps a tool running for many minutes, and at the ear the declarations are 74 to 98 dB(A) for routers with figures under the current standard, 68 to 89 dB(A) for random orbital sanders and 88 to 94 dB(A) for 3 and 4 inch belt sanders.
Sixteen trim, compact and plunge routers are declared under EN 62841-2-17 in our guide to the quietest routers. The eleven with figures under the current standard run from 74 to 98 dB(A), a spread far wider than among jigsaws or circular saws, and most of it follows the size of the tool.
Twelve 3-1/4 inch planers, cordless and corded, are compared under EN 62841-2-14 in our hand planer guide, which explains why sharp knives and light passes count for as much as the model.
Our guide to random orbital sanders ranks fourteen 5 and 6 inch sanders under EN 62841-2-4: 68 to 89 dB(A) at the operator's ear, and 78 to 97 of sound power. The two ranges overlap. One sander's sound power can read like another sander's figure at the ear, so check the label before you compare.
Heavy stock removal sits at the other end of the same standard. Our guide to belt sanders covers 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.
With drills and drivers, the mode decides
Cordless drills sit between 64 and 80 dB(A) for plain drilling; hammer mode, or an impact driver, lifts that to 92 to 100. In our guide to cordless drills and impact drivers, the mode outweighs the brand. Festool prints a figure for each mode, and drilling metal, the T 18+3 comes in at 64.00 dB(A).
A bigger torque rating is not always a louder wrench. Our impact wrench guide ranks thirteen wrenches declared under the EN 62841 standards, from 91 to 101 dB(A) at the ear, and keeps Milwaukee's figures with no standard named in a group of their own.
Sixteen hammers fall into SDS-plus, SDS-max and corded groups under EN 62841-2-6 in our guide to rotary hammers. Some Makitas carry figures two to four decibels higher, by the maker's own numbers, once a dust extractor is fitted.
Nailers came in five forms of declaration. Our guide to brad and finish nailers found sixteen: cordless under EN 62841-2-16 or the older EN 60745, pneumatic under ISO 11148-13, and it 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.
How are shop vacs, dust extractors and compressors rated?
Not under EN 62841; they use other standards, or none at all. The machines in this group run alongside the tools, often for longer.
A dust extractor starts when you pull the trigger on a sander and runs on for a few seconds after you let go. Our guide to dust extractors covers them under EN 60335-2-69, the safety standard for commercial wet and dry vacuums, and its seven single value declarations run from 67 to 82.9 dB(A) at the operator's ear.
US makers agree on no test for the stationary bag, canister and cyclone collectors that serve a whole shop. Our guide to the quietest dust collectors sorts sixteen of them into groups by distance and weighting and ranks only within each; among A-weighted figures at 10 ft, Oneida's Dust Cobra is lowest at 73 dBA.
Shop vacs teach the labels
Milwaukee publishes "Sound Power Level: 87 dB(A)" and Makita publishes 60 dB(A) sound pressure. Setting one beside the other tells you nothing, since one is power and the other pressure, and our guide to wet dry shop vacs is the clearest lesson in labels on this site. Festool states 71 dB(A) under EN 60335-2-69 with 3 dB of uncertainty: a higher figure and a far better documented one, and the figure that guide would trust.
Compressors bring the thinnest figures of all. Of the sixteen in our guide to quiet air compressors, none names a test standard and only one states a distance, Campbell Hausfeld's DC080500 at 68 dBA at 3 ft. That guide also explains why quiet costs air, and why the CFM your tools need comes before the decibels.
Most declarations are printed only in Europe
For 207 of the 243 power tools in our catalog, the US product page and US manual carry no full declaration, meaning sound pressure, sound power and K together. The count comes from the notes on US documents for every tool in 19 catalog files, from circular saws to impact wrenches, as they stood on 26 October 2026. Shop vacs, extractors, collectors and compressors are left out, since they use other standards. It covers our files, not every tool sold.
Of those 207 tools, 196 print no noise figure in the US at all. Seven print a bare dB figure with no standard or measuring position, such as "Low noise (84dB)" on a Makita belt sander page, and 4 give only a percentage, such as Milwaukee's "up to 2X quieter".
Our guides therefore pair each US tool with its European or international twin before quoting a declaration, and say how the two were matched. A tool with no confirmed twin stays in its guide's silent aisle rather than gaining a guessed figure.
The other 36 tools either have a figure in a US document or have no note on what the US documents print. Fein and Metabo are the clearest cases, with a sound pressure figure on their US pages for the tools we hold, and for most of them sound power and K as well. Hilti's US pages print both quantities for its TE rotary hammers.
How do you read a tool's noise declaration?
Five questions sort a useful figure from a misleading one, across every guide here.
| Ask | What to check |
|---|---|
| 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 only the maker's European documents print the declaration, and our guides match the European model to each US tool before quoting it. |
Tools whose US documents print nothing appear in each guide's silent aisle. That means only that their makers do not say.
Why can a tool be louder in use than its rating?
A declaration is one standardised test, and the manuals are candid about what pulls real noise away from it: the material, the blade, the grit and the tools you add. Thin sheet metal can lift a grinder as far as 15 dB past its declared value, in the Makita and Bosch manuals' own warning. The depth of each pass and how firmly the work is clamped turn up guide after guide as well, weighed as heavily as the choice of tool. And tools add up, because a sander brings its extractor and an air nailer brings its compressor.
For reference points, OSHA treats exposure above 85 decibels as able to damage hearing. Its simple test: when you must raise your voice to reach 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, and the National Park Service adds a sense of scale: every increase of 10 dB doubles the perceived loudness. Apart from those three agencies, every number on this page is the tool maker's, from a full EN 62841 declaration to a bare compressor figure, quoted with the standard, job or distance wherever the maker gives one. We write about product noise figures, not hearing safety.
