Powders vs Liquids
Powders have been used by our family for years, my Mom was introduced to tide powder by a friend a good 30 or 40 years back and we still use tide powder up to this day in our 2 year old Whirlpool duet.
In our old Whirlpool/Inglis top load, we used powder and the results were evident, clothes came out clean all the time, one day we got liquid to try it out and my Mom told me that it would not clean at all, boy was she right, there was a clear difference, clothes seemed dingy and some stains still stayed.
Fast forward to now where we also have a front loader, we did the same test, while the did come out CLEANER with liquid in our duet, the powder still did better. And if i recall, we tried Persil proclean liquid with a load which contained a shirt with ring around the collar and was washed on the normal cycle. It failed to remove it, but as soon as we switched back to the powder it was 100% gone. Adding a funny story, whenever I use anything but tide powder like that one time I used Persil liquid, my mom notices immediately after the load is washed, I don't know how she does it, probably because of the years of use she can tell the results -LOL-
But coming back, personally I think powder does work better than liquid myself just by that ring around the collar shirt. The only exception for use of liquid is when a comforter is being washed, or a load of darks which are washed in either cool or cold.