How Loud Is a Rowing Machine, Really?

If you search for how loud a rowing machine is, you will find confident numbers. Sixty-five decibels. Seventy-two decibels. Eighty at high stroke rates.

None of them come from a manufacturer. We checked.

What we actually looked for

We read the published specifications and manufacturer listings for every brand represented on this site, on 24 July 2026, looking for a decibel rating on any model. Here is what we found.

Zero. Not one manufacturer in the category publishes a noise figure for any machine.

That means every specific number you have read was produced by a reviewer holding a phone in a room whose acoustics you know nothing about, at a distance they probably did not state, at a stroke rate they probably did not state, with a microphone that was not calibrated. Those numbers are not lies exactly, but they are not measurements either, and they will not predict what your machine sounds like in your room.

We are not going to add another one. What we can do is tell you what determines the answer.

The three sources of noise

1. The resistance mechanism

This is the biggest factor and the one you choose when you choose a machine.

Magnetic makes no sound at all. A magnet moving near a metal flywheel is a silent interaction. Every noise on a magnetic rower comes from somewhere else on the machine.

Water makes a low-frequency whoosh, roughly comparable to a shower. Low frequencies are less good at passing through walls than broadband noise, and most people find the sound pleasant rather than merely tolerable.

Air is a fan, and there is no way around it: the machine works by moving air, and moving air makes broadband noise that carries. The harder you row, the louder it gets. Air rowers are the best training tool in the category and the wrong choice for a shared wall, and both of those are true simultaneously.

Hydraulic hisses softly. Quieter than air, less pleasant than water, and beside the point next to the fact that hydraulic resistance drifts as the cylinders warm.

2. The seat and the rails

On a magnetic machine this is the dominant noise. Two published details reduce it:

• Covered rails. Sunny publishes protective coverings on its Dual-Rail model. Those covers are doing acoustic work.
• Roller material. YOSUDA publishes PU rollers. Polyurethane on aluminum is meaningfully quieter than steel on steel.

3. Impact through the floor

The one people underestimate, and in a flat the one that matters most.

The seat arriving at the end of its travel and the handle stopping at the finish both put force into the floor. What your downstairs neighbor hears is usually not a flywheel — it is a rhythmic thump through the ceiling at about twenty-four strokes a minute.

No resistance type addresses this. A rubber equipment mat does, and it costs a fraction of the difference between any two machines on this site. If you live above someone, buy the mat before you optimize the machine.

What to buy for quiet

A magnetic machine with covered rails, on a rubber mat. Our ranking for exactly this is here, and the Sunny Dual-Rail is the clearest expression of the specification at a sensible price.

If you want a sound rather than silence, a water rower gives you one worth having, and the wooden ones store upright in about two square feet.

Why we are telling you this rather than a number

Because a number we made up would be more useful-feeling and less true. This site exists to publish the figures manufacturers do print and to name the ones they do not, and this is one of the clearest cases in the category. That is the whole method.