How loud is an ice maker?

Noise is the most frequent complaint in retailer reviews of these machines, and it is very close to the only specification that manufacturers do not publish. That combination is the reason this page exists.

Specifications checked 9 September 2026

Every published figure we found

What a decibel figure would mean

A number on its own tells you very little, so if you do find a rating on a listing, these are the reference points to read it against. Decibels are logarithmic: an increase of ten is heard as roughly twice as loud, not ten per cent louder.

The noise people actually complain about

There are two sounds and they are usually confused. The compressor produces a continuous low hum, comparable to a fridge, and most people stop noticing it within a day. The second is the harvest: at the end of every cycle the finished ice is released and falls into a plastic basket, and that is a short sharp clatter.

The harvest is what makes a machine intolerable in an open-plan room, and its frequency follows directly from output. A machine completing a cycle every seven minutes interrupts a room roughly nine times an hour. A slower machine producing the same ice over a longer cycle interrupts it less. That means the specification that best predicts how annoying a machine will be is not a noise rating at all, it is the cycle time in the ice output register, which manufacturers do publish.

What we will do about this

Measuring this properly means a sound level meter at a stated distance, in a stated room, with the compressor running and again at the moment of harvest, on machines we have bought. Until that happens this page publishes what manufacturers publish and says so. When we measure, the readings will be labelled as measured, with the method and the date, and they will sit in a separate column from the manufacturer figures so the two are never confused.

In the meantime, the honest advice is the boring kind: buy on output and cycle time, put the machine somewhere a clatter every ten minutes does not matter, and switch it off overnight.

Common questions

How many decibels is a countertop ice maker?

We cannot tell you honestly, and that is the finding. Of the 153 products we could source across 41 brands sold in Australia, 6 publish a decibel rating. Everyone else omits it. Any site quoting a confident decibel figure for a machine whose manufacturer does not publish one has either measured it themselves, in which case they should say so and give the method, or made it up.

Why are these machines noisy at all?

Two separate sources. A compressor cycles on and off, which is the same low hum a fridge makes. Then, at the end of each cycle, the finished ice drops into the collection basket, and on a machine with a plastic basket that is a sharp clatter every six to fifteen minutes. People who describe a machine as unbearable are almost always describing the second one, not the first.

Will a more expensive machine be quieter?

Not reliably, and there is no published data to support the assumption. What does change with price is the cycle: a machine that makes ice faster drops ice into the basket more often, so a high-output machine can be more intrusive than a slow one even at the same compressor volume. Frequency of the clatter matters more than its loudness.

Can I put one in a bedroom or a studio apartment?

A compressor ice maker cycles day and night whenever it is switched on and the basket is not full. In a single-room apartment the practical answer is to run it during the day and switch it off at night, rather than to look for a quiet model, because no manufacturer publishes the figure that would let you choose one.