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Bob- I have a box of Tide Ultra Oxi powder, but haven’t purposefully tested it yet. In fact, I should do my stained flour sack test for all the detergents in cool water to see if the results are truly any better than in warm. It seems like stained kitchen towels come out cleaner in cool water with a number of the detergents I rotate through. I’ve used Tide Professional powder quite a number of times and get great results. Haven’t tried any of the other powdered Tide variants. The only downside I can think of with Tide Pro is that it comes in one size: 155 loads. I’m a laundry junkie and wash a load almost every day, so I burn through a detergent stash fairly quickly. If you buy a box of it on my recommendation and hate it, you’ve got a LOT of detergent on your hands.

As far as liquids go, my recommendation would definitely be Tide Plus Ultra Stain Release.

Your laundry habits are quite different than mine and I have very soft water. Most of the loads I wash only fill the tub about 2/3 full—sometimes only half. Loads of bath linens are always maximum capacity. I generally wash that load using the Whites or Sanitize With Oxi cycle in hot water. Same with sheets. Whites has a maximum wash tumble time of 30 minutes, which is fine. If I feel like the load needs more contact time with the detergent solution, I’ll use the Sanitize With Oxi cycle on light soil, which is a 50 minute wash tumble. The maximum wash time on that cycle is 80 minutes, which I only used once just to check it out. What I like about the Oxi cycle is that all the spins are a few minutes longer than the Whites cycle and the two rinse tumbles are a few minutes longer, as well. Towels emerge from that cycle noticeably drier compared to the Whites or Heavy Duty cycles.

I’ve mentioned that my favorites are UK Persil Bio & Non-Bio, TideMatic (for front-loaders) and ArielMatic (for front-loaders) from India, but they cost an arm and a leg. I lead a simple life, so detergents—of all things—are my splurge. The party selling ArielMatic on Amazon is down to only eight 1 kg bags and the price is a stunning $29 per bag or about 84 cents per ounce. Ordering TideMatic or ArielMatic from NavaFresh, which specializes in imports from India, is crazy expensive, as well.

I’d encourage you to try one of the Tide variants you have on hand in cool water and see what the results are. It may be something you try once and say ‘Never again!’ or you may find it works well for certain loads. You tend to wash maximum capacity loads, so might want to use a cycle other than Normal, which will probably be very stingy with water. The quirk with the SQ is that on the Normal cycle it fills to a certain level and that’s it. It won’t add another drop. I find a load of bath linens soaks up all the water, which proceeds to tumble for 50 minutes with the load being wet, but not fully saturated with water. It refuses to add any more water, unlike on the other cycles, which will add more if a particularly absorbent load soaks up the initial fill.

I found a reference to Coldzymes at the Tide website in the pacs/pods area. Thought there was a splashier example of it somewhere on the site, but don’t have time to search right now. Check the last sentence in the blurb shown below.

frigilux-2024082719382003781_1.jpg
 
"Not sure testing powders would do them any justice, though. Since they are tested in cold/cool water at 75°F, most powders would not perform nearly as well as liquids at that given temp. If they were tested in warm or hot, that’s were the power comes out."

Perhaps true for USA offerings, but powder detergents across pond have been formulated to perform at temps low as 20 degrees C.

Am speaking of TOL offerings by Henkel, Unilever and others including those from commercial/industrial laundry suppliers.

 
While there has been some sucess in getting consumers to reduce wash temps, many won't allow that choice to interfere with results.

In Germany long the land of boil washing average temp has gone down to about 40 degrees C. However Germans aren't willing to give up "boil wash" results. This combined with fact powder laundry detergents are still rather big sellers in that country means products have to step up their game.

Thus powder detergents in Germany and other parts of EU still can give "boil wash" results at temps low as 20 degrees C to 30 and onto 40 degrees C.

https://www.test.de/Vollwaschmittel-Die-Besten-fuer-Weisses-4770157-0/

https://www.test.de/FAQ-Waschmittel...Ihre-Fragen-5073601-0/#question--1294740484-0
 
Launderess- US Tide detergents are formulated to work well in cool water. Don’t have much experience with other American powdered brands. Will say that Amway’s SA8 powder definitely likes to work in hot water, much like Persil Non-Bio. I should pick up a box of Henkel Persil to see how it compares to the UK formula. I picked up a box of German Persil years ago, but found it sudsier than the UK counterpart.

Also: Friends are in Ireland for a couple of weeks and they picked up a box of Ariel pacs to bring home to me. This is the same couple who brought back small boxes of powdered Persil & Ariel when visiting England. That was my first experience with UK detergents.
 
Posted this awhile back and am doing so again to drive home a point.



For a few decades now detergent manufacturers have been telling consumers to turn down the dial temperature wise. They claim and are supported by independent consumer testing that warm, cool or even cold water is perfectly fine for their enzyme laden products.

Top and even some middle shelf bio detergents are perfectly capable of delivering good to excellent results at lower temperatures. More so powders with advanced activated oxygen bleaching systems.

OTOH when using non-bio detergents as testing in video above shows higher temps are better.

Why is this? Usually because non-bio detergents rely more heavily on bleaching systems to remove marks and soils instead of enzymes.
 
It`s interesting to see Original Gain as the worst liquid detergent, after all the stuff is not that cheap.

Not a new insight that bargain brands of the big multinationals are their money makers which means you may save a few cents but you get a much worse value for your money compared to a TOL product.
Of course you might get away by increasing the dose but where are your savings then?

As to cold water is better than warm or hot because of the enzymes I`ll bite my tongue, it triggers me but I see it`s pointless and I don`t want to derail this thread.
 
"It`s interesting to see Original Gain as the worst liquid detergent, after all the stuff is not that cheap."

Every laundry detergent from P&G sold in USA has a niche. That and not meant to compete head on with main TOL money maker, Tide.

Gain began well enough with "Micro Enzymes".





But P&G also introduced Tide "XK" with enzymes at about same time.



Over years Gain became more about scent, fragrance or "long lasting freshness", than cleaning performance. That is if one wanted or required heavy duty cleaning or stain removal, Tide is what one chose. OTOH Gain scratched another type of itch.





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHjOKu_psFA

P&G is famous for introducing new technology with one detergent in their stable before giving it to Tide. Oxydol had oxygen bleaching system long before Tide With Bleach. So did Biz (as pre-soaker and wash booster) which even was activated oxygen bleach. Once TWB was a solid hit neither product was needed and P&G sold off both Oxydol and Biz brands.

Gain was kept on but again occupies a different niche from Tide. Thus CR's testing showing Gain having poor results isn't surprising.

Happily situation isn't a case of either one or other. All one need do is use some sort of booster product with Gain such as oxygen bleach or some sort of "booster" product (which P&G offers of course) that will give Gain the oomph missing from Tide.
 
Frigilux

Frigilux- Really? I am shocked by that. Usually I notice a fair bit of decline with anything less than warm/40°C. It doesn’t look like they have reformulated them recently either (thankfully).

David- I will say, the Persil Sensitive is quite good. I can’t say if performance decrease recently with the newer reformulations, but it doesn’t look like the Sensitive version was impacted. Though, it no longer appears on CR testing.

Coldzymes are just a fancy way of getting people into trusting washing in lower temps with marketing. There is a chance the enzymes in newer formulations are slightly different so that they are more active at a lower temp. Though, it does not explicitly state that.
 
lakewebsterkid- I’ve been surprised a number of times by stains removed from kitchen towels in cool water using a good dose of a top-performing detergent. However, I really should purposely stain a few flour sack towels with ketchup, mustard, barbecue sauce, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, coffee and chocolate syrup, and perform tests that have a bit more veracity. Then I’ll know if the enzyme detergents are actually doing better in cool water or not.
 
Thanks to Launderess for the vintage detergent ads!

Glenn- The kid on the football field in the second commercial who says, “With that outfit you belong on the bench!” is definitely Christopher Knight. Have 95% confidence it’s Mary Jo Catlett in the first commercial. Good eye!
 
persil advanced clean

So how is Persil Advanced Clean formulated? I've always found they work and smell better than Tide in my opinion due to less suds and a more pleasant fragrance. Maybe it's just me, but the Tide scent was off putting to me especially after the power pods oxi+odor.
 
That's definitely Chris Knight, and was probably done right before he began playing Peter Brady in '69. I have multiple pics of him, most from the publicity department of ABC-TV. He was overall my favorite "Brady", and the show was something I watched every week without fail. In the Summer of '72, my mom, sister, and I were in the Los Angeles area visiting relatives. A family friend worked at ABC (a department head), and he was going to try to arrange for me to meet Chris and Eve Plumb while there. Unfortunately, they were filming in Hawaii that week, and we had to leave to come home before their return. Extremely disappointed to say the least. I'd also hoped to see them when they filmed at King's Island the next year, but I was sick that day.
 

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