I must be lucky to play lots of games, never cleaned my PS4 base 2013-2016, then didn't clean my pro 2016-present and still have it extremely silent. It's not just me, all of the PS4's I've seen in person are extremely silent and you can only know they're on from the light bar, even in shitty situations and even open air like camps and so where friends gather and play with humidity hitting 100% and drizzles with lots of mist during the monsoon season.
No worries, I've cleaned it from the outside after the video, lol. I tell the house maid to not even touch the spot, as I find the console open sometimes for hours without noticing it. And I'm a lazy ass so I rarely clean that holy spot. I don't really touch it as I'm 100% digital since late 2014.
I think we got some good ones. It seems to depend on the country? Some countries are getting from one factory or another. Because I've seen more than 100 PS4's here in shitty situations and all of them are quite. Only one was jet and very noisy is actually my sister's OG PS4, US version from the gray market.
Problem with noise is that how people sense/hear/take the noise, is subjective.
Same noise can be annoying as hell to one person, while another doesnt even notice it. While both hear it, one also notices it as it penetrates his conscious mind, and second ones brain just "filter it out".
Then same noise can be "loud" to one, and silent/normal to another.
Also the type of noise affects the perception, like there is dude playing music outside of your apartment.
Person 1 likes russian trance techno that the dude plays = he doesnt mind it that much
Person 2 hates russian trance techno = he wants to murder the dude
As an example, one of my friend said "my ps4 is silent, weird", when I complained how fucking loud my second unit were (launch unit were as loud as my hoover, second unit loud enough to be heard from wc, 7-8m + one door between). Well I wanted to check his to know if my second one is defective, went to his house. He opens the door.. and I could easily hear his ps4 screaming from 10m away from his living room
And after I pointed it out to him(the noise) he were like "ohh, I really didnt notice it before, but yeah it is loud, damn!"
So his brain just filtered it out.
Example of volume levels: I have Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones, they can output around 104 decibels, which is almost 20 times more than 85 dB(which is used as level of too loud, causes hearing damage) because of logarithmic scale. They are really loud even at 40-50% and I usually use mine at 10-25%
And yet almost daily I read at reddit how crazy idiots cry how they are not loud enough, like they literally use them at 100% volume(basically any headphones WILL cause hearing damage at 100% volume, unless they or source is broken) and still somehow(I have no idea how, they should cause pain) think it is not loud enough, probably already broken ears from playing music too loudly.
So, some people just dont have same kind of senses, some get annoyed from tiny noises, some ruin their ears with playing music too loudly and dont even notice how crazy it is.
My point: while it is nice to compare experiences, without noise measurements made by professional equipment and professional/good person, they are just experiences but not the 100% truth.
I havent personally ever seen quiet PS4, all I have seen have been clearly audible at annoying levels, like masking what characters are talking about. units vary from launch to 2 years old, OG and pro modelts. And most have been on space where they have plenty of air, like top of a desk.
(cant say anything about xbox one systems, because nobody I know owns them)
Not saying your experiences are false, it is possible that you have perceived them as "almost silent", while they could have been the same as most, kind of noisy.
One possible explanation is, that in your country houses have air condition, or road noises come from outside, something that masks the fan noise so when you dont notice it above other noises = it is "silent".
Even Nintendo Switch outputs enough noise on docked mode to be heard from 2-3 metres away, in non-noisy room. So I find it out REALLY hard to believe that any console with moving parts would be anywhere near of being objectively silent.
Normal quiet room(not silent) have background noise levels around 25-35 decibels, which is no loud by any means, so for ps4/console to be so quiet that it would be perceived as silent, it would have to output not much more than 20-40 decibels, depending how far the listener is. Noise levels drop roughly 6 db when distance is doubled. Like if it is 50 dB@1m, it is 44dB@2m and so on.
So even the noisy ones can be "pretty silent" if user sits far enough.
I made my Master degree thesis about noise measurements, and took many courses at university. And while I'm not super expert of the subject, I think I know enough to give "scientific view" to it.
And I am HUGE Sony fanboy, almost all my equipment are from Sony + I collect Sony stuff, so I am not biased in any way
Being noisy is the only fault on playstation consoles, and I really hope that PS5s are much more quiet
Even ps2 fat units had huge variation, so it is possible that some PS4s are "silent" on certain environments, but I have yet seen but 10-20 noisy ones, so unless some factories output just noisy ones, I find it difficult to believe that you have met only the best units. (ours are made in china, voxcon? unit
tl:dr How we perceive noise is subjective, and we should not trust what others perceive, only professional measurements can give us some kind of base level to use in comparisons. But from the looks, PS5 is most probably better than ps4 on noise levels
