Methinks you are on to something....
Have been using regular detergents (Cheer Free & Gentle powder and liquid, now along with Tide CW), for ages now with great results. Though if one reads THS one would swear the only detergent in the world for front loaders is Persil.
You may notice that many "HE" detergents were rolled out with much fan fare.. Purex, Tide, Gain, Cheer, Wisk, only to vanish as fast as they came. Tide HE is easily found here, one has to hunt a bit for Wisk HE, but the rest are very hard to find indeed.
Tide is and probably has always been a high sudsing detergent, strange Tide Coldwater while can be sudsy in hot or warm water, the suds almost vanish in cold water,and by the third rinse the water is clear from our front loader. This is something one could not reach with Tide HE which made tons of suds, no matter what the dose and was very hard to rinse cleanly.
All that is required for good cleaning with a front loader is a low sudsing detergent. Without foam making chemicals, it is quite easy to reach the proper dosage for good soil removal/suspension,whitening/brightening et al.
Someone actually posted over on THS one "needed" an HE detergent to keep colours from running. That is a load of flannel, and am here to tell you have not had any problems with colours running using Tide Coldwater or Cheer.
Methinks this "HE" detergent thing is to get people into spending more money after they paid so much money for a front loader. The pitch is "you paid so much for your new machine, why not pay more for the proper detergent to get the best results". Anyone notice this is the same pitch car dealers/makers use to get one to buy preimium petrol?
Front loaders have been pretty much standard in American laundromats for ages now, and have yet to see ONE person using "HE" detergent. for that matter P&G who makes vend sizes of all and sundry versions of Tide, does not make Tide HE in a size for laundromats. Now one would assume given the large captive audience P&G would have lept at the chance, but guess they are happy snookering home users to be bothered.
One other side of the coin in this is that with proper front loader design, especially for rinsing, it is possible to get great results using most any type of detergent (within limits). However many American front loaders use so little water in both wash and perhaps a tad bit more in the rinses that using a clean rinsing detergent is mandatory.
We have spoken about this before, how commercial front loaders flush the sump during rinsing to get all the suds/soap out before the next rinse. Without doing this excess foam/suds will remain present for the next cycle. This dilutes the rinsing process as the rinse water will have to cope not only with soap/detergent in the laundry, but whatever is left over from the previous rinses as well.
Failure to spin between rinses and or reach proper spin speeds also leads to soap/detergent residue. From what I have seen all these modern uber front loaders from Bosch, LG and others suffer from the same defect in some way or another, they are "spin challenged". Rather than just getting on with it, they seem to be programmed to require the most exacting proper load balance before spinning. If machines were designed a tad more robust, with more steel and less plastic, they could withstand slightly out of balance loads, and perhaps the odd really out of balance wash. No one is advocating allowing the unit to bash itself to death, but there has to be a happy medium somewhere.
Launderess
