How loud is an air fryer? Do air fryers make noise?

Welcome back to Air Fryer Bro, the place where air fryer minds combine 🙂 On this site we have covered many common questions that people have about air fryers! Air fryers are like alien spaceships to some people, so we aim to answer those questions! Today we ask…..

How loud is an air fryer? Air fryer’s vary in loudness depending on the brand and type of air fryer. Generally, you would find an air fryer makes a similar amount of noise to a dishwasher or a washing machine. This would put it among some of the louder kitchen appliances, although not the loudest!

How do we know this? Well let’s dive deeper into the details!

This Decibel Meter will be used to help compare the loudness of air fryers!

How do I know how loud an air fryer is?

My Own Experience

As I live in a city with some of the highest property prices in the world, my kitchen is rather small. This means that, unfortunately, I don’t have a large amount of kitchen appliances to test myself. 

However, the appliances I do have, I measured using a free decibel meter I found in the app store of my android phone.  When measuring the few kitchen appliances I have, I tried to keep the environment consistent across both noise recordings, as well as keeping my phone the same distance away from the appliance I was recording.

Before I started the tests, I did a recording of my kitchen environment itself, so that I can see how much more the sounds of the air fryer(and other appliance) added. My result was as follows:

In though, I live in the center of a major city, I still apparently have a kitchen as quiet as a quiet library (according to the app I used anyway!). So 47.2 decibels is the baseline here!

The air fryer I have is a Phillips model similar to this one. Actually, I think it is exactly the same, just with some slight differences for the Asian market! Click the image to view this model on Amazon.

With a steady hand, I recorded the sounds this makes when it is cooking. The result I got was as follows:

So, with my air fryer noise added, we still only got a reading equivalent to a ‘conversation’, so certainly not so bad at 66.8 decibels.

At the time of writing, the only other kitchen appliance I could use was my trusty kettle! You can see evidence of this in my grainy and blurry photo below 🙂

Now, for those of you that use kettles like this, you will probably know that they usually get louder the longer they are boiling water. So, I made sure to wait until the kettle was fully into the boiling process.  The result from the kettle can be seen below:

My result puts my Philips air fryer pretty close to a kettle in full swing. This doesn’t seem too bad for a kitchen appliance! Of course, air fryers will vary in noise level depending on their brand and type.  I did try searching around some Amazon community reviews of different air fryers to see if I could find anyone’s decibel readings, but to no avail!

I would actually really like this to turn into a community-based project. So, if you have a different model of air fryer and don’t mind taking the time to download a decibel meter and take some readings, we would love to hear about your results in the comments section below. If I get enough, I will make a community results section in this article.

*Jenny very kindly commented below and stated that her Ninja air fryer hit a decibel rating of 70.

How do I know how loud other kitchen appliances are?

Research

As I don’t have a lot of my own kitchen appliances to test, I went on the internet to see what I could find as good sources of how loud other kitchen appliances are.

I found two interesting sources. A research paper that was uploaded by Geoff Leventhall on the Research Gate website. It is not clear who the author is, but it seems to be a well put together and ‘official’ study. The only downside is that it is from the 1970s, so should be taken with a pitch of salt. I would imagine that most kitchen appliances from that time period were generally louder than nowadays. It is interesting that this paper deduces that the kitchen has some of the loudest appliances in the household!

Also, I found a website called Quiet Home Lab that is dedicated to everything quiet in the home. They list some common household appliances and their decibel readings. The only problem here is the article doesn’t say where these readings are from. Did the author take them independently or did they find from another source? 

Again, if anyone from the community wants to take decibel readings of their other kitchen appliances, we would love to hear your results below. 

What makes an air fryer loud?

Well, an air fryer uses intense heat to cook. One of the key features is the fan that helps to constantly push this hot air around the cooking compartment. This powerful fan is the main reason for the noise levels of an air fryer.

Should I be worried about loud kitchen appliances?

There was a Daily Mail article from the UK, which referenced the World Health Organization’s findings that loud household appliances could be causing people increased stress, loss of sleep (who sleeps near their air fryer?) and even increased chances of heart disease. In this article, they talk about any appliance over 55 decibels being potentially harmful, so from my experience air fryers can be included in this.

If you do find this worrying, I would do some more research, as this is just the findings from one isolated study. Another thing you could do is move away from the open-plan kitchen and make sure you have a traditional enclosed kitchen space as far away from the living area as possible.

What’s the final conclusion?

When comparing my readings to the decibel meter above, it seems that my Philips air fryer is defined as bordering on ‘loud’, comparable to a loud conversation, maybe.

Putting into context with my kettle, which is a touch louder, I don’t really see any problem with my air fryers noise levels. The 1970s research paper cites such appliances as waste disposal units and ‘slow’ food mixers at a similar decibel rating as my own air fryer. At Quiet home lab they rate washing machines and air conditioners in a similar range.

This is all a matter of opinion and preference, but I don’t find the noise from my Philips air fryer to be that bad. Although, air fryers seem to be among the louder segment of kitchen appliances, so if you are easily annoyed by this you may wish to reconsider your air fryer purchase! Or make sure you have an area in your kitchen to muffle the noise somewhat! As stated above, a closed plan kitchen would be better for this too!!

What do you think? If you have an air fryer, do you find the noise annoying or uncomfortable? We would love to hear all about it in the comments section below.