Powder up: ‘old-school’ laundry detergents best bet for cleaner clothes, 2024 Choice test finds

Newer innovations in laundry detergent can’t beat plain powders and some detergents are hardly better than water, Choice testing has found.

After putting more than 90 laundry liquids, powders, pods and sheets through their paces in front and top-loading washing machines, powder detergents came out on top for performance and value.

Mark Serrels, editorial director at Choice, said this is true across the board for cleaning products. “Fancy new ones don’t perform as well as the old-school stuff,” he said.

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The test also found “a massive difference between high performers and low performers”, with some of the worst products barely outperforming water.

Laundry sheets, marketed as an eco-friendly, plastic-free alternative to traditional detergents were some of the lowest performers tested by Choice. While laundry pods performed better, results were mixed.

Serrels said the Choice testers found that using half the recommended volume of detergent gets similar results to using the full amount.

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For front-loading washing machines, Omo products swept Choice’s tests, coming in first, second and third place. Omo Ultimate Powder was best with a score of 86% and Omo Laundry Powder this coming in second at 84%. At $1.23 and $0.80 a wash respectively, they were two of the more expensive products tested – though still cheaper than Omo capsules, which came in third, but cost $1.35 a wash. For front load value, Aldi’s Laundrite Laundry Powder scored 79% and cost just $0.11 per wash.

Aldi’s affordable Laundrite Laundry Powder is an even better buy for top-load machines, which show very different product results in Choice’s tests. With a score of 69% the Aldi powder was the best of the lot; beating out Omo Ultimate, which came in second at a score of 65%.

Serrels said top-load washing machines are themselves a bad option. “Don’t buy them, in general. There are good ones and there are bad ones, but on the whole … the top loaders are underperforming.”

When it comes to most cleaning products, neither brand nor price is an indication of efficacy, Serrels said. While most Omo products performed well, some did not. The same goes for Aldi products. Their Laundrite Laundry Liquid bombed with a score of just 50% in front loaders – which is no better than plain water, and the lowest front load score of the test. “That can be quite confusing,” Serrels said. “It’s the case with all cleaning products. You can’t trust the brand. You can trust an individual product, but the brands themselves aren’t always an indicator of quality.”

To conduct their tests, Choice orders specially soiled cotton swatches which have been stained with baby food, perspiration, grass and even pig’s blood. All tests are conducted in a purpose-built facility, to ensure consistency. Choice even ranks detergents based on their ability to remove certain kinds of stains – blood, olive oil and perspiration. Olive oil was the most stubborn stain to shift, while plain water performed better than more than a third of detergents when it came to removing blood.

Detergents sold on their sustainability credentials performed poorly on Choice’s tests, something Serrels said is disappointing. He also cautioned consumers to be sceptical of some green claims. “Sometimes they say they’re green and they’re not that green,” he said. Factchecking green claims can be complicated, which Serrels said, “speaks to a broader issue around all this stuff – we’re making consumers responsible for these issues”.

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“If governments and agencies put that kind of effort into solving the problems on grander scales, maybe we wouldn’t have to be so responsible.”

A spokesperson for the Water Services Association of Australia said that the criteria for detergents to define themselves as eco-friendly or environmentally friendly are unclear, and that “because of the definitional uncertainty, it is unclear how beneficial an ‘eco-friendly’ label is to waterways”.

“The chemicals that can cause environmental harm are typically compounds that are difficult to naturally degrade, including some optical brighteners, dyes and artificial fragrances,” the WSAA spokesperson said. “Products that have biodegradable constituents, without or low in phosphorus and salt should significantly benefit waterways.”

When asked if the most environmentally friendly option might be simply to use plain water, Serrels said: “Water’s kind of cool, and kind of useful for cleaning.”

“If you want to clean your stuff really well, you should buy a laundry detergent that’s good, and not waste money on one that’s bad. Because in that case, water’s not bad.”

“In my opinion, you should always use laundry detergent to clean your clothes,” Serrels said. “Just use a good one.”