The short answer
Magnetic resistance and no footfall is the quiet combination. Among what this site covers, that means a magnetic rower or a magnetic cross trainer.
A treadmill is the loudest, and it is loud in both ways at once: a motor and a deck making airborne noise, and a body landing on a deck making structure-borne noise that goes straight into the floor.
The two kinds of noise, and which one causes complaints
Airborne noise travels through air: a fan, a motor, a chain, a console. It is reduced by a closed door, by distance, and by buying a quieter mechanism. It is also the kind makers occasionally publish a figure for.
Structure-borne noise travels through the building. Footfall on a treadmill deck, a rower’s seat running its rail, the frame of a cross trainer flexing. It reaches a downstairs room far more effectively than airborne noise does, and nothing on this shelf publishes a number for it.
Complaints are almost always about the second kind.
Roughly from quietest upward
- Magnetic rower — near silent mechanism, seat movement is the only structural input.
- Magnetic cross trainer — quiet, though the standing mass moving on a frame puts more into the floor than a seated user does.
- Water rower — a sound most people find easy to live with, and considerably more mass on the floor.
- Stepper — mechanically simple, but the movement is a footfall.
- Air rower — the fan is the resistance, so it is loud by design.
- Treadmill — motor, deck and footfall together.
What actually reduces it
Anti-vibration pads under the feet. A dense mat under the whole footprint, where mass does more than thickness. Standing the machine across joists rather than along one where that is possible. And the free measure: not using it at the hours that cause the complaint.
Where this stops
No figure published on this shelf translates into what a neighbour hears — that depends on the building’s construction, which no manufacturer has seen. Pages here report the mechanism, the assembled mass and any decibel figure a maker publishes, with the condition it was measured under where one is given.
Questions readers send in about this
Do any makers publish a noise figure?
A few publish a decibel figure for the machine, usually measured at a stated distance and speed. It describes airborne sound in the room it stands in. It says nothing about what travels through a joist into the room below, and nothing on this shelf publishes a figure for that.
Do anti-vibration mats under the feet help?
They reduce what the frame transmits into the floor, which is the structure-borne half of the problem. The pads sold for washing machines are the same product. They do nothing for airborne noise — a fan is still a fan.
Is a magnetic exercise bike the quietest option overall?
Among cardio machines, magnetic resistance produces the least airborne noise and a bike has no footfall. Exercise bikes are covered by a sister site rather than here; what belongs on this shelf and comes closest is a magnetic rower or a magnetic cross trainer.
Last reviewed 20 September 2026