I don't know what there testing, but 2-1 liquid can't touch Tide HE powder w. Bleach. The ratings would be far more significant if it was broke down by whites, colors, and all purpose. Wisk for example is excellent on heavy greasy stains where both Tide and Persil can't touch. Kirkland and Members Mark are also excellent general purpose detergents. Surprisingly no mention of Persil Mega Perals which also is excellent for blazing whites, and goes head to head with a Tide HE bleach. I somehow believe they throw together a one product fits all, and that's the gospel of CR. They know little or nothing about laundry and wash chemistry!

Persil and Tide Ultra stain release are very good. They are the only ones that will get my husband's work shirts clean. He works in an oil refinery and gets mud, clay, grease and oil all over his clothes.

I have to try the members mark some time.

Nothing and I mean nothing keeps my whites quite as dazzling as Tide with Bleach powder. ..but on the other hand I don't often play around with my whites....but...how do you rate a whitening detergent with a non whitening detergent...catagories..that's what they need.

P&G is going to have to do something drastic this year since this is two years in a row that they have fallen from the top. They could start with changing all their sweet scents back to the original scents, or even better, back to the real original scents pre 1970's. And than toss in some real Downy..that ought to insure some big sales regardless of ratings.

RP: The Persil "pearls" from Wal Mart was at # 8 but that was the only mention of any "powder or pearls" from Persil.

Isn't that the only powder/pearls from Persil in the US?

Wow- I'm impressed the Kirkland free clear performed so well! I've always wanted to try it but was afraid to stray away from Tide F&G. Wonder if I should give it a try when I run out of Tide!

Geesh, I just noticed Gain Flings tied with Persil ProCaps..that's just so wrong, the ProCaps are one mighty pack a punch detergent.

And what's with the Wisk Power Blast Pods tieing with Tide Pods...what's in the wisk pods anyway. Now I'll have to try the Wisk pods.

NO, NO way Gain Flings pods come anywhere near Persil Pro-Caps, Tide pods or Mitch's all Stainlifter pods.

I wonder why the Arm & Hammer powder pods did not rate, or score? They are excellent!!

Does it say what criteria they used and how each detergent dealt with each of them? Things like grass stains are irrelevant to me but the man of the house is a diesel mechanic and there are very few white items in the house so my detergent needs will be different that someone who deals with different stains and soils than I do.

I've written CR about doing some kind of report on sudsing between detergents, an "ease of risibility" if you will.

If you are using the "recommended" amount and doing a long cycle, it wouldn't be long before you got so many suds that they would fill the machine.

I guess I'll never see that test implemented.

On a side bar CR also tested washers and the only ones published in the hard copy (magazine) were, Samsung, Maytag, LG, Kenmore, Whirlpool & Amana.

No mention of Speed Queen, Electrolux, GE, Frigidaire or any other brands.

They are listed on the online version of the ratings report.

No warning of LG's habit of water bang or of Samsungs bent/broken support rods or how to prevent moldy washer by doing more hot washes.

Even the best dryer by Reviewed.com (Electrolux) didn't make the list.

I have always found it suspect that CR has never tested Speed Queen....or have they and I missed it?

I do think speed queen has been tested and found at the bottom.. its a water hog so its not gonna fair well in the ratings.

I take CR's reviews with a grain of salt. If you read the reviews people submit, many of their top rated items get horrible personal reviews. I've seen items ace the individual categories, but score lower overall than other that other that have lower ratings. I would like to seem them show results and methodolgies of the individual tests. They appear to be all scientific and factual, but there seems to be a significant element of discretion.

What is suspect about the detergent review ratings is many of these detergents are the same that were reviewed last year. The manufacturers did not alter the formula of these detergents! There is absolutely no way that there can be that much variation in testing the same products this year compared to last year. It all seems kind of phoney to me.

If you look around the net, you'll find out that CR is basically worthless, and has been for many years. I first heard about it via TrueDelta, and they had a long post there explaining some of the issues. I also know that if you ask anyone who's an enthusiast or professional in the area that you're looking at ratings, they almost always will totally disagree with CR.

Part of the problem is their testing methodology - they come up with a lot of artificial tests that may or may not approximate real life at all. They also use all things as it comes out of the box. That's a reasonable test for some things, but for others, like washing machines it makes 0 sense as pretty much everyone can and does use the cycles for what they're washing to the extent the cycles are named appropriately. There just are things that everyone uses on the default setting (For me, it's the dishwasher - pretty much always auto mode, and the TV, I plug it in and go). There are lots of other things where people use settings to tune the device. The problem there is how do you generalize what the common level of tune is for a device? Is it fair to rate something that OOTB would be a 60 a 95 *if* you know how to tune it over the course of a couple days by someone with special skills, and maybe with some modifications? Not so useful. But if selecting "Whites" when washing whites does a much better job, say 60 to 80, than the default "Normal" or "Auto" setting, I think that's fair to point out and rate accordingly.

The other problem IMHO is they really really push economy / value over everything else. This isn't a bad point of view, but it really would be served by breaking out like Consumers digest used to do the cheap, middle, and high end by price, and picking the best performing of each on that scale. I.e. a Camry may be a better value than a Lexus dollar for dollar, but I don't know if it makes sense to penalize the Lexus a noticeable amount simply because it's a higher end product and costs more. OTOH - if there are things that are expensive (Monster AV cables) that actually aren't any better than the cheap (Monoprice AV cables) or are actually worse, that should also be pointed out.

I think they also push eco friendliness quite a bit, which is fine, but Greeness is orthogonal to functionality and price. I think all this ended up how it is because they have limited space in a printed publication, but on a web site? There's no reason not to give a LOT more information, that they have but claim is "proprietary". That information is what would actually help people choose what is best. They could have "magic quadrants" which is only a small step up in complexity but convey so much more info potentially.

The next step up would be to have functionality, cost, eco, reliability, style, usability all ranked in a list. . .

CR tested all the listed detergents at 75 deg F ("cool"), and only some of them at 90 deg F ("warm").

CR is in a bubble. The testers there have been entrenched for years, they run things, it's very successful and they do what they always have done. Their results can be worth a fortune to a manufacturer. Look at the ad for Persil. The rating basically put them on the map.

Thing with them is price/value. They have never rated expensive appliances as tops and never will. Their standard is Kenmore. Higher cost is an automatic downgrade.

Their ratings are still very influential and they are a respected publication. No one can pay for a rating so they are good in that sense.

But they don't function for the high end of the market.

I doubt they function for any of the market. I work in IT, so a few years ago when they decided to rate a MacBook as top when compared to a Compaq laptop - sure, that isn't wrong. However they were comparing a $1,500 laptop (pretty close to high end in most people's minds anyway) to a $600 laptop. Yet they didn't even RATE a Thinkpad that ran $1,400 which is a much better point of comparison. They miss the point there that Macs do not run the same programs as PCs, so that's probably a little important to consider and consider in their ratings. . .

They were rating KitchenAid mixers as tops and ignoring Bosch Universal Plus's and DLX Assistant mixers entirely, during the gear shredding era of KitchenAids...

I'm concerned that they miss, or at least fail to present, what qualitative difference there is at different price points, and fail to point out when there isn't one. The places where this is really important is when they rate something as the best functioning at a price point they like, and miss that sometimes you can get double the quality for 10% higher price. Now, there's always the people for who "cheapest good enough" is what they want, but I don't think CR hits that either.

With the internet, CR is kind of unnecessary - they only rate the biggest, most well known brands. So you won't find out about alternatives you might do well to consider. They focus on the midpoint price, so don't necessarily even get price / value mixes right.

A bit off topic, but is P & G changing Tide again? My grocery store has the 95 ounce/68 load boxes on sale and they say discontinued. Maybe they are just changing sizes again?

The ratings are skewed by the fact that washing effectiveness in "cool" water is part of the rating. Powdered detergents take longer to dissolve in cool water, so they are not as fully effective as quickly as liquid detergents.

Good points 9xvq

Ok...but what should I be using on dark dabrics and colors? (I agree that CR has gotten too complacent/has a paymaster issue and is well on the way to making itself obsolete, but each generation has to figure that out.....)

Practical - Ask ten laundry freaks this question and you'll get at least eleven answers :) For darks I like to use detergents that do not have optical brightening agents (OBAs). These include Cheer powder, Woolite for Darks liquid, and many of the "green" detergents. I prefer Cheer powder for most things but use Woolite on jeans.

I was going to say I may have tested more laundry soaps/detergents than CR..but they do have a pretty big list, and I only have 43 (give or take a couple) lol. Definitely more green ones tho. That's a list I'd like to see: Green laundry shootout.

I agree with Alex about darks, no OBAs. I mostly avoid them all together, occasionally I do whites with some Persil Universal or Tide powder with Bleach Alternative