How Quiet Are Ryobi's Whisper Series Products?
Just about anyone with functioning ears can agree that lawn care tools like lawnmowers, hedge trimmers, and blowers are some of the loudest things you can encounter in a suburban neighborhood. OSHA guidelines require operators of industrial-grade equipment to wear noise-deadening earmuffs or earplugs while using them, though even if you're not right next to them, the sounds produced by these tools can reverberate maddeningly throughout your home.
The loudest lawn tools, unsurprisingly, are the gas-powered ones, with internal combustion engines kicking up a royal fuss and belching fumes. Many hardware brands also offer battery-powered lawn care implements, which are generally quieter thanks to the lack of an engine but still may be a bit louder than you'd prefer. Even without an engine, after all, there's still a lot of mechanical spinning, whirring, and churning going on in there.
If you have sensitive ears, you may be interested in the Ryobi hardware brand's Whisper series products, which bill themselves as being remarkably quiet for their muscle. Are these claims the real deal, though, or just a lot of empty noise?
What's included in the Whisper line?
The HP Whisper series of Ryobi products are designed to meet your general usage needs for lawn care power tools and at an exponentially lower noise level than those of similar products. While plenty of Ryobi's regular offerings are generally quieter than gas-powered alternatives, the Whisper series is meant to go the extra mile, dialing an afternoon cacophony down to a mild distraction.
The line includes just about anything you could need for regular lawn upkeep, including lawnmowers, hedge trimmers, string trimmers, standalone and backpack blowers, snow blowers, and perhaps the granddaddy of noise-making power tools — chainsaws. In addition to all the lawn care stuff, the Whisper line also offers a handful of air cannon fans, designed to give you the powerful cooling breeze you want in the summer season without producing so much noise that you can't hear the TV.
How quiet are they, actually?
On the individual store pages for its Whisper products, Ryobi claims that each one is anywhere from 70-86% quieter than gas-powered tools.
For the sake of example, consider the leaf blower, another absolute brain-shaker of a noisy tool. A typical gas-powered leaf blower has a noise rating of around 80 to 90 decibels. According to a chart created by Yale Environmental Health & Safety (PDF), prolonged direct exposure to sounds in that decibel range has a real chance of causing hearing loss, so it's pretty loud, to say the least. Typical electric leaf blowers are slightly better, with a decibel range of 65-70, about the same as two people having a conversation in the middle of an active office.
Compared to those numbers, though, Ryobi's Whisper series blower is downright quiet, with a noise rating of only 57 decibels. That's about the same volume as the sound of your refrigerator motor; noticeable, certainly, but hardly intrusive.
Do the users agree?
It's easy enough to say a product is whisper-quiet when you can't actually hear it, but do those who have used Whisper products agree? For the most part, the answer is yes. Reviews on Ryobi's online storefront generally agree that the Whisper series products are much quieter than those of its competitors. While there's a bit of debate on the power and reliability, the consensus also seems to be positive there.
Dan Wheeler of Tool Box Buzz conducted a test on the Whisper series Backpack Blower, which has a listed noise level of 59 decibels. With the blower on his back and a phone with a noise-measuring app at his ear, he ran the device on its highest turbo setting. The result was a noise level of 75 decibels up close, scaling to 65 decibels at 20 feet away. This means that, even at its highest power setting, the Whisper backpack blower is quieter than a gas-powered one.