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How loud the bullet or mini vibrator is. We measure the decibels on low and high power with a sound level meter. We also test whether we can hear each vibrator from behind our closed bedroom door.
When does it matter:
When you live with other people or are distracted by sound.
Some bullet vibrators are quiet simply because they’re not powerful. We recommend the options above because they offer discreet vibrations without compromising on vibration power.
You can see all product ratings and filter this table by performance and price using our comparison table tool here.
When It Matters
A bullet or mini vibrator’s noise is important if you need something you can use while other people are home or if you’re easily distracted by sound.
But…
Bullet and mini vibrators are usually a lot quieter than other kinds of vibrators. Most of the ones we’ve tested remain inaudible behind a closed door, even on their highest setting. So noise isn’t as important to consider when choosing a bullet vibrator as it is for louder toys like large wand vibrators.
For context, listen to the sound of a typical bullet vibrator compared to that of a typical wand vibrator in the video below. Almost all bullet and mini vibrators are discreet and quiet enough for most people.
Listen to the difference in noise between a typical bullet vibrator and a typical wand vibrator. Bullet and mini vibrators are generally discreet.
Results Discussion & Our Recommendations
Here, we’ll discuss the most useful results of our testing and provide our recommendations. For details on how we conducted each test, see our testing methods section.
Audibility Behind a Closed Door
What is it:
Whether my partner could hear me using the bullet or mini vibrator inside the bedroom while he stood on the other side of our closed bedroom door. We tested each vibrator on low, middle, and high power levels with the house completely silent. Then we tested each vibrator’s highest power with a box fan turned on in the bedroom. Lastly, we tested the highest power with music playing in the bedroom at a normal listening volume.
When does it matter:
When you live with other people and want to select a bullet vibrator or mini vibrator you can use confidently without them hearing.
If you live with other people, the most important aspect of noise to consider is whether they might hear you using your bullet vibrator behind a closed door.
My partner couldn’t hear most of the bullet and mini vibrators we tested from behind our closed bedroom door, even on their highest power level. Several of my favorites, including the We-Vibe Touch X, the Lovense Ambi, and the Blush Limited Addiction, were completely inaudible despite each having excellent power.
Many bullet and mini vibrators remain inaudible behind a closed door on all power levels, including those pictured above. Left to right: We-Vibe Touch X, Lovense Ambi, and Blush Limited Addiction
A few, like the FemmeFunn Ultra Bullet, were audible on their highest settings only. But even then, my partner filled our testing spreadsheet with notes like this one: “This was just barely perceptible. I had to try really hard and wait for sounds outside to become extremely quiet. Even then, i could just barely make it out occasionally. I doubt anyone would actually hear or be able to notice during typical use.” Bullet vibrators are simply quieter than larger toys.
Some bullet and mini vibrators, including the We-Vibe Tango X, the Dame Pom, and the Fun Factory Laya III, make a rattling sound when you hold them in the air. My partner could hear these vibrators when they made the rattling sound, but not when I pressed the vibrators to my body which dampens the sound of the rattling – sometimes completely, other times it just makes the noise quieter.
These ones are still discreet as long as you play carefully (or if no one’s standing immediately on the other side of your bedroom door).
You can also discreetly use the louder bullet vibrators by simply providing some other background noise to mask the sound of the vibrations.
Whenever my partner could hear the bullet vibrator, I’d turn a box fan to its lowest setting in the bedroom to see whether that background sound masked the bullet vibrator’s noise. In almost all cases (the Doxy Bullet being an extremely loud exception), simply turning on a fan in the bedroom provided enough background noise that my partner could no longer hear the bullet vibrator on any power level.
And no bullet vibrator remained audible when I turned on music in the bedroom at a normal listening volume.
For discreet play, bullet vibrators are one of the quietest types of vibrators.
Decibels on High and Low Power
What is it:
How loud the bullet or mini vibrator’s highest power level is, measured in dB with a sound level meter approximately 12 inches away
When does it matter:
If you typically use your vibrator’s highest power levels or want the freedom to use the full power range without worry.
Good Sound Level:
<42 dB is excellent; Nearly everything under this value was inaudible behind a closed door.
We also used a sound level meter to measure each bullet vibrator’s noise (in decibels) when vibrating on the highest and lowest settings.
We use a Class II Sound Level Meter to measure the decibels of each bullet vibrator.
We also record this test and provide the video for you in each bullet or mini vibrator review’s noise section, so you can hear what the vibrator sounds like. See the video below, for example, which comes from the Magic Wand Micro review here.
More than 75% of the bullet vibrators we’ve tested are under 50 dB on their highest power, which the Hearing Health Foundation considers “Average Room Noise.”
So most mini vibrators have reasonably quiet sound levels and are not distracting. Even many of the vibrators we measured above 50 dB, like the BMS Essential Bullet (57.0 dB), were still completely inaudible behind a closed bedroom door.
Others, including the BMS Swan Maximum (49.5 dB) and Maude Drop (45.3 dB), had a distinctive pitch that was still barely noticeable despite being under 50 dB.
Keep in mind, even the mini vibrators that were audible in our testing are generally discreet. Someone would need to be standing on the other side of your door trying to hear something to notice the sound. And you can easily mask the noise with a box fan or music.
Since most bullet and mini vibrators are pretty quiet, it comes down to your personal comfort with the noise. Most are quiet enough for the majority of people. If you’re especially concerned, I’d pay the closest attention to our audibility test results and watch our noise videos for the best idea of whether the sound will distract you or not.
Our Testing Methods
Our complete Noise performance rating is a weighted average of three test results: Decibels on Low Power, Decibels on High Power, and most importantly, Audibility Behind a Closed Door.
Audibility Behind a Closed Door
The first test is designed to provide the most practical context about how discreet each bullet vibrator is. This test helps you understand how likely it is that someone you live with will hear you using your mini vibrator.
If someone is on the other side of the house, they definitely won’t hear you using your bullet vibrator. So we test to see if someone immediately on the other side of a closed bedroom door or a shared wall might hear the bullet vibrator while you use it.
For this test, I have my partner stand directly on the other side of our bedroom door while I use the mini vibrator in the bedroom. I use it on its lowest, middle, and highest power levels in bed, under a blanket, like I would normally use the vibrator.
My partner listens and documents whether he could hear the bullet vibrator at each of these power levels.
We try to err on the safe side so that you can be confident vibrators we marked as “Inaudible” are very discreet. To do this, we make our house as silent as possible, so that the “Inaudible” bullet vibrators are even less likely to be noticed under normal conditions at your house.
We turn off our furnace or AC, and even wait for the sound of cars driving down our street to pass. We also live in an old house with about a 2 inch gap under our bedroom door, so sound travels easily in our home. If my partner can’t hear the vibrator during our test, it’s really unlikely someone will hear it at your house, but your results may still vary.
My partner also marks anything he heard as “Audible,” even if it was barely noticeable and he doesn’t think anyone in a normal circumstance would hear it. This includes several bullet vibrators he only heard after waiting several minutes for cars to drive past or neighbors outside to finish mowing their lawn or having a conversation, so that our house was finally silent enough that he could barely hear the vibrator’s motor.
After testing the bullet vibrators in our quiet house, we retest any that my partner could hear. This time I turn a box fan to its lowest setting in the bedroom, and we see whether it masks the bullet vibrator’s noise.
I turn the mini vibrator to its highest setting, and my partner notes whether he can still hear it. The fan masked the sound of almost every bullet vibrator we tested.
We retest the few that were still audible, even with a box fan. This time, I play music in the bedroom at a normal listening volume. Specifically, I play Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer” on repeat to keep results somewhat consistent between different bullet vibrators.
So far, no bullet or mini vibrators I’ve tested have remained audible when playing music.
While your results may vary, use our test as a gauge when comparing bullet vibrators. The ones that were inaudible in our testing are more likely to be discreet for you too.
While the Audibility test above provides more practical context, we also quantitively measured the loudness of each bullet vibrator’s low and high power levels in decibels using a sound level meter. These tests are intended to give an objective, quantifiable comparison between different mini vibrators’ noise levels.
We also film our decibel testing and provide the videos so you can hear each bullet vibrator’s vibrations. Each bullet and mini vibrator’s noise video can be found in its full review.
Example noise test video using the Pillow Talk Racy G-spot bullet vibrator.
We recorded the decibel measurements with a Class II Sound Level Meter (Gain Express SPL-25). The sound level meter was mounted to a tripod and positioned approximately 12 inches away from the center of the bullet vibrator.
We turned the mini vibrator to its lowest power, recorded the noise levels for 30 seconds using our sound level meter, and transferred the measurements to a spreadsheet. We then averaged the decibel readings over these 30 seconds and reported the average noise level as our test result.
We repeated the process with each bullet and mini vibrator at its highest power level.
We also recorded our testing room’s ambient noise levels for two reasons: First, to provide a baseline for understanding our decibel measurements. Second, we cannot measure sound levels quieter than the ambient noise of the room since our sound meter is picking up the room’s noise too.
So when a bullet vibrator’s recorded noise level is within one standard deviation (1.82 dB) of the room’s average noise (35 dB), we assume the meter is actually recording the sound of the room. Therefore these vibrators are at least as quiet as the room’s ambient noise, so we conservatively record their noise level as being the same as the room’s average decibel reading.
We also chose to hold each bullet vibrator with our hands instead of creating a setup to grip each vibrator at an exact distance from the sound level meter. When a bullet vibrator is in contact with something other than skin, it introduces additional noises by vibrating the setup that are not present during normal use. So instead, we held the bullet vibrators ourselves for more realistic results.
As a result, the center of each bullet vibrator’s motor to the center of the sound level meter is not precisely 12 inches since we’re physically holding the vibrator in place. But we marked the position to maintain consistency within about a half inch. Slight differences in the distance also had a very minimal effect on the decibel reading when the vibrator was held approximately 12 inches away from the meter.
It’s also worth mentioning that most of the bullet vibrators are actually quieter when pressed to your body than they are when held in the open air.
So in typical use, your bullet vibrator will be quieter than our reported values. And the bullet vibrator will sound quieter when pressed to your body than what you hear in our videos. But we wanted to report the louder scenario since realistically you won’t keep the vibrator fully in contact with your body 100% of the time.
Bullet and mini vibrators are generally among the quietest types of vibrators. The majority are discreet enough for most people. If noise is a big concern, the We-Vibe Touch X, Pillow Talk Racy, and Lovense Ambi are a few of my favorites that have great power while remaining especially quiet.
