On its normal setting, most run about as loud as a bathroom fan — you can talk over it, you can’t sleep through it. On max suction it’s closer to a hair dryer.

The dock is the loud part

Nobody warns you about this. When a self-emptying dock fires, it’s genuinely startling the first time — significantly louder than the robot itself, because it’s pulling debris up a tube at full power. The good news is it only lasts ten or fifteen seconds and it happens once or twice per run.

If your dock is going to live in a bedroom, a nursery or next to a home office, factor that in. It’s the single most common reason people move the dock after a week.

How to make noise a non-issue

Schedule it. This is the answer for almost everybody. Set the robot to run while you’re at work or out of the house and the entire question disappears. Every robot with an app supports scheduling, and it’s the setting I’d have you configure on day one anyway.

Use the lower suction modes on hard floors. Max suction buys you very little on a flat hard floor and costs you noise and battery. Let the robot boost automatically when it hits carpet instead of running everything at full power.

If you genuinely need quiet, mopping runs are much quieter than vacuuming because the suction motor is doing less work.

Dad’s Take

Schedule it for when you’re out and the noise question answers itself. That’s what I do.