The creator argues that most dishwashers are designed to use a pre-wash dose and a main wash dose of detergent, a fundamental often ignored by single-dose pods, and presents independent ASTM testing confirming the new powder matches or exceeds the performance of a leading premium pod. The video also features a detailed demonstration using temperature logging and peanut butter to stress the importance of purging cold water from the hot water supply line before running a dishwasher, particularly in North America, to ensure the water reaches the optimal enzymatic temperature needed for effective cleaning. This is further reinforced by showing how adding pre-wash detergent dramatically improves the initial cleaning phase, especially with fats and oils.
Interestingly the Gemini summary is nowhere near as good. But when it is... how helpful will that be! So many things with a very good summary will save so much time / avoid having to dive into unless truly in need of the details.
But the quality of the summary - and maybe the ability to expand it if slightly more details are required - and the low latency with that - are all super important. In that sense, AI can potentially save a lot of time in getting the right information quickly.
This has been his stance for a long time. He has a lot of dishwasher videos for some reason!
One thing I can't get a good answer to is whether the "prewash" step is universally the case or not. I have a good Bosch dishwasher and there's no compartment for a bit of pre-wash detergent. I don't even know if my dishwasher cycle has a pre-wash step. I would assume the dishwasher manufacturer knows what's best.
The owner's manual gives advice about not pre-rinsing the dishes because the food bits actually help the wash cycle, so I'm wondering if it works differently from the two-step process in this video.
I have a Miele dishwasher. Not only is there no place to put prewash powder, but I can hear the little door for the detergent pop open like 2 minutes into the cycle when on the default program.
This dishwasher also came with a box of Miele pods (and they encourage you to buy more). I think it's designed first and foremost to not use powder.
I have a Bosch as well, i sprinkle a bit of powder on the door. It has a pre-wash run which goes quick.
The manual is likely referring to not hand rinsing dishes before loading them which was very common 30 or 40 years ago. I had to train my Mother to stop doing that.
The owners manual for my Bosch 500 says prewash detergent is not necessary. But it does have a prewash cycle as I can hear it draining before the main wash.
Note: This dishwasher provides the optimum cleaning performance without the use of a prewash detergent and further enhances our standards of sustainability and efficiency.
I keep my Bosch set to Auto and Extra Dry and use Kirkland pods. Rarely do I have anything that comes out less than perfect.
The Extra Dry setting seems to help with getting the glass and ceramics dryer. Plastics still come out quite wet since it uses a hotter final rinse rather than a heating element to get dishes “dryer”.
I have a previous generation Bosch 500 series dishwasher. For my use case I get the best results with the heavy cycle. However I found that adding loose detergent in there for the "prewash" resulted in soapy residue being left on the dishes if used in conjunction with the heavy cycle (but not with the normal and auto cycles).
Alec's dishwasher videos are based on some rather primitive dishwashers. For instance he talks about his test unit not flushing out the spray arms, but Bosch/Siemens filters the water going to the spray arms so it wouldn't recirculate dirty water anyways. Same deal with the prewash. Bosch uses a turbidity sensor to determine how many "prewash" cycles to run and when to reuse the water, something his test unit very clearly does not.
Yeah, I think one has to understand the man to really get something useful of what he says.
He is kind of a cheap man and much of what he says really applies to low-end devices. Some expensive devices may have similar problems to the cheaper stuff but really if you buy a premium device you won't have many of the problem he talk about.
I know this type of person very well. They always have some reductionist approach to things, where for them, the expensive stuff is mostly marketing with added bells-and-whistles and largely works the same.
My experience is that this isn't quite right. Some brands do have a premium that is more related to style/status but if you buy some seriously engineered stuff it will work much better most of the time.
He's a midwesterner so some of that's to be expected. But AFAIK KitchenAid is one of the higher end Whirlpool brands. I just checked the orange big box store and the price difference between the KitchenAid dishwasher lineup and that of the Bosch 300/500 series comes down to what's currently on sale.
For reference I'm pretty cheap too but try to be pragmatic. My fridge is a $600 Frigidaire (AEG/Electrolux) top freezer unit. The main selling point was that another youtuber (an appliance repair guy by trade) pointed out that it still has a mechanical timer. They get mocked by appliance sales droids but the top freezer design is significantly more efficient than the alternatives and the lack of electronics mean that you're more likely to be able to repair it.
I don't know enough about US states subculture to infer that, it's just the opinion I formed watching him.
I agree that KitechnAid is more on the higher-end side, he even said himself that it's kind of a premium device. It doesn't surprise me, because at some point in your life you want to stop with the frugality shenanigans and just want stuff to work if you can afford them.
To be clear that's not a critic, I tend to be as cheap as can be reasonable as well, it's generally a decent way to proceed, to avoid overpaying for useless over-marketed, over-engineered stuff.
I'm just trying to give some context but I think we are in agreement anyway and I do believe anyone who watches him long enough will get the gist of it at some point.
It always seems a shame when naturally clever people are assumed to have autism, or when their cleverness is attributed to it. Why can't someone just be intelligent without labels?
If the detergent container has a door, then that means the soap is dispensed later, which means there is a pre-wash stage it’s trying not to waste the detergent on.
I've micro-optimized my dishwasher setup to have all my 100+ pods and other in-bulk dishwashing-chemicals stored in a compartment between my two dishwashers.
I'm also firmly in the camp of having a flat cutlery compartment at the top and not that inefficient, and uncivilized, scarring, basket in bottom section.
Until seeing that video I thought I was crazy. I've found my master.
Yes, i do. The idea was that it keeps the kitchen cleaner, because there's no more gross kitchenware that didn't made it into the dishwasher. Always wanted that. Then saw it in practice at a startup once, and then finally gave it a go.
There will be instances when both are just full and you still end up visible filth, but even then, you at least have to go just once into clear-out mode. It works out great so far. If it didn't... well, I guess I'd need to buy a third one ;-)
I never understood the requirement for having to preheat your pipes. The dishwasher has access to a hotline, and a drain. Why wouldn’t it just run the hot water for 60 seconds to ensure it has maximum heat. This would just be a software feature, and cost nothing on their part.
It seems so arcane for the operator to have to do this before running a cycle
I've found it harder and harder to find powder dishwasher detergent in my country. I think they intentionally pull them off the market, I used to buy a large Finish container and now I can barely find a place that sells _any_ sort of dishwashing powder.
Yeah, in Poland two "premium"-ish brands stopped selling powder in favor of tablets, and the cheaper brand is often missing from shelves, I need to order it in delivery separately. Situation is funny, since salt and rinse liquid are still widely available along with supposedly 3-in-1 tablets :) . I guess they are not so 3-in-1 as the ads say. But I will continue buying powder for as long as it will be manufactured. It's cheaper and more efficient. Same with washing machine power.
Interesting, here in New Zealand every supermarket has at least one brand of powder. Normally Finish is one and competing brands includes locally made and/or eco-friendly ones. Hopefully that practice doesn't reach here!
I wonder if that's why my now something like nearly 40-year-old dishwasher is so bad for leaking, on certain cycles? Maybe the pods foam up too much, because it seems hell of a foamy inside.
At some point, I'll maybe post up the pics of repairing the door hinges - previously it was leaking badly because the chunky metal hinges had cracked and bent, pushing the door up enough to not squash the bottom lip seal. Unobtainable parts now, but if you have a welder...
If you don't use a JTAG cable and a MIG welder on the same project in the same day, can you really call yourself "full stack"?
Anecdotally we started using these dishwasher sheets and the dishwasher started erroring during the cycle and also leaked slightly. On observation when it errored it looked very foamy inside.
Simply changing back to powder completely stopped the error and the leaking and this was in a 1 year old dishwasher
> Maybe the pods foam up too much, because it seems hell of a foamy inside.
Dishwasher detergent doesn't make suds. Dish soap does. Are you sure you're using the correct stuff? Or prewashing the dishes for some reason and not getting all the soap off?
i used multiple dishwashers in multiple countries. blomberg, ge, bosch, miele, lg. used pods for as long as they exist (with exception of miele that has detergent cartridge that is good for two dozens of cycles). the only times when I had problem with dishwasher performance it's when either dishwasher had physical malfunction, dishwasher arms were blocked by some object or when i forgot to put pod.
I thought that the multi-solution pods - they're usually have differently-colored, for I presume marketing reasons - have pockets with different dissolve rates, so that the solutions are dispensed in sequence. I've not tested that, though.
I watched the video, but may have missed this, but shouldn't the testing have shown that the powder was substantially better?
Or did they not test the "putting some powder into the prewash" thing and so it was just "powder released all at once" vs "tablet released all at once".
Even there I'd expect some mild improvement from the powder mixing more easily than a plastic wrapped tablet (though maybe if the content inside is liquid this factor is reversed?).
Does this mean the big corps do have some chemical advantage that cancels out the crappy delivery mechanism?
Or does it mean that a mechanical spray prewash step isn't meaningfully improved by chemicals in most circumstances?
I was more alarmed by the wrappers being plastic. I had assumed they were some clever biodegradable thing but they're not.
I was a long-time adherent of powder for all the reasons in the video. I used the Seventh Generation powder that is widely available, or once was. One day I couldn't find it, so I got Cascade Free & Clear Pods. I was completely blown away by how much better the pods work. And they work faster, too, because my dishwasher cycles are based on water clarity and they end sooner if the detergent is working faster. So I permanently switched, nevermind the cost difference.
Perhaps part of the issue is that the presenter in the video is using a somewhat primitive machine.
Pods work great for me, and I love not having crumbs of powder under the sink, or a bottle of liquid detergent with encrusted drips down the side. It's just gross.
They are more expensive, but I buy them on sale at Costco for about $16/100, so at $0.16 per load I really don't care if powdered detergent is only $0.03 per load or whatever.
There is clearly a revealed preference for pods among consumers for these things, and "proving" that everyone is wrong for liking them is just not a very interesting exercise imo.
Hah! I had watched this just last night. I have a Fisher & Paykel Dishdrawer so this prompted me to check the instruction manual and sure enough, I had been putting Rinse Aid in the pre-wash area. I don't even really know what Rinse Aid is honestly but it's fun having some things be a black box. Turns out the correct spot is turning a knob, pulling it out and pouring it down a hole containing a glowing red light. I had assumed there was just some sort of circuitry down there and doing so would be a horrible idea. Thanks Technology Connections!
Having the cleanest dishes is not always the optimization one is looking for.
I like pods because there is less of a chance my clumsy self, or younger kids can accidentally spill costly soap for my dog to try to lick up or overfill the dispenser. My dishes are almost never caked in fats and oils when I put them in. I do not use a pre-wash. If I do I break a pod in half and toss in the bottom.
This guy makes me roll my eyes. There is nothing more exhausting than a self-assured YouTuber lecturing others as if he has all the right answers. He is not wrong per se but not everyone has their own preferences and needs.
One surprising thing I got from this is that the "Energy Saver" mode used just as much energy, and even more water.
But he said that almost as a throwaway, with almost no explanation of his methodology in determining this, nor discussion about how common this problem might be.
My dishwasher came with a booklet that showed energy and water consumption for each setting. Eco mode is about 20% - 50% more efficient in comparison to the other programs.
I have been using Dirty Labs dishwasher powder for about a year, since we got a new dishwasher, and inspired by some of his older videos on this topic. The performance has been good, no complaints. I don't torture-test my dishwasher like Alec does :). With the powder, I can do the whole some-on-the-door, some-in-the-dispenser thing mentioned here, or just use less for light loads. It is without a doubt not a budget option.
One aspect I like about it is that they have a fragrance-free variant, and even the "fragrance" one is not too bad. A second aspect I like is that it's biodegradable, et cetera. So a bit lighter on the environment, I hope, and the SDS is prominently available on the website.
I think another thing which is under-appreciated is that you need to know how to do the basic cleaning chores for your dishwasher-- for example if it has a filter, learn to clean it! Otherwise its ability to clean will probably be compromised.
I love that there are people who will go into this much detail on stuff. It's really cool that they do. But the whole thing is that if you follow some sequence of steps, powder will clean as well as or better than pods for a third the cost. All right, this isn't a significant portion of my expenses so I'll pay the 3x cost since my dishes come out clean anyway.
I wish the description of the video was like an abstract.
There's more to the video than just that. For example: you should run your hot water tap before turning on your dishwasher, and you should experiment with the dishwasher settings, because they can make a big difference.
> But the whole thing is that if you follow some sequence of steps, powder will clean as well as or better than pods for a third the cost.
YMMV. Based on the earlier videos, I did switch back to powder, and I did follow the steps of putting some powder in the main compartment for the pre-wash. And i did try several powders.
Yet, none of the powders were anywhere near as good as the tablet we use.
It also doesn't contain any nasty chemicals, unlike several of the powders[1].
So we went back to our tablets. It might cost slightly more, but hardly a significant expense by any stretch.
Now, there might be some powders that work better which aren't available here in Norway. But I gotta work with what I got.
For long videos, I have a script that fetches the transcript using yt-dlp and pipes it to an LLM for keypoints. If the content sounds interesting, I watch it; if not, I save 45 minutes.
I much prefer the powders. They clean as well as the pods. You actually are supposed to do these steps with the pods too like running the sink to hot. If you don’t, at least with my washer, you are left with undissolved pod carcass somewhere in the wash.
The worst thing by far about the pods though is the smell. I don’t know why anyone would want to eat off a fragranced dish but that is the vast majority of the market I guess.
In terms of powder I use seventh generation fragrance free and I have no issues with it.
I remember watching this[0] video by the OP a couple years ago. Never would have thought I could listen to someone talk about dishwashers for 30 minutes but it was surprisingly fascinating!
I went to my Costco right before they banned phosphates in the dishwashing detergent and got a pallet of Cascade with 5% phosphates. People looked at me like I was was crazy. I'm still going through my pallet 15 years later and my dishes are always clean :-)
I just throw a bit of the detergent in the tub for prewash rather than put it in the cup, as it will leak out anyway.
One thing you could probably do for the phosphate-free stuff is to add a "teaspoon of TSP" to the detergent and that would probably help - not sure if the formulation in today's detergent would agree with it though. I'll find out in another 5 years I guess....
I started using powder about a year ago, because of this guy. It legitimately works so much better than pods, because of the bit you 'spill' into the pre-wash part; and it's cheaper!
My only addition to this discussion is that the Dirty Labs dish soap has been legitimately better for our baby stuff and other plastic stuff that sometimes gets oily. I recommend it.
I wonder if its possible to press powder into pods, and use them. I mean, pre-make a bunch of them from store brand powder, and keep them ready for use.
Not sure if water can be introduced to bind the press, or maybe some other material.
Who the hell has a dishwasher connected to hot water? Shit, my washing machine doesn't even have hot water. Both devices have internal heaters. Both are over 10 years old.
This guy has been incorrect in his yt posts so many times, I simply do not believe him anymore.
He is all about monetization and doesn't care about truth or accuracy.
I inferred a trick from his original video. Dish soap and dishwasher detergent are not the same; the latter contains an enzyme that breaks food down. If you have something that is completely wrecked, fill it with piping hot water and put a dose of dishwasher detergent in it. Leave it overnight.
I strongly doubt the stuff is good for your skin, so I've only done this a few times.
81 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 85.6 ms ] threadThe creator argues that most dishwashers are designed to use a pre-wash dose and a main wash dose of detergent, a fundamental often ignored by single-dose pods, and presents independent ASTM testing confirming the new powder matches or exceeds the performance of a leading premium pod. The video also features a detailed demonstration using temperature logging and peanut butter to stress the importance of purging cold water from the hot water supply line before running a dishwasher, particularly in North America, to ensure the water reaches the optimal enzymatic temperature needed for effective cleaning. This is further reinforced by showing how adding pre-wash detergent dramatically improves the initial cleaning phase, especially with fats and oils.
But the quality of the summary - and maybe the ability to expand it if slightly more details are required - and the low latency with that - are all super important. In that sense, AI can potentially save a lot of time in getting the right information quickly.
One thing I can't get a good answer to is whether the "prewash" step is universally the case or not. I have a good Bosch dishwasher and there's no compartment for a bit of pre-wash detergent. I don't even know if my dishwasher cycle has a pre-wash step. I would assume the dishwasher manufacturer knows what's best.
The owner's manual gives advice about not pre-rinsing the dishes because the food bits actually help the wash cycle, so I'm wondering if it works differently from the two-step process in this video.
This dishwasher also came with a box of Miele pods (and they encourage you to buy more). I think it's designed first and foremost to not use powder.
The manual is likely referring to not hand rinsing dishes before loading them which was very common 30 or 40 years ago. I had to train my Mother to stop doing that.
Note: This dishwasher provides the optimum cleaning performance without the use of a prewash detergent and further enhances our standards of sustainability and efficiency.
The Extra Dry setting seems to help with getting the glass and ceramics dryer. Plastics still come out quite wet since it uses a hotter final rinse rather than a heating element to get dishes “dryer”.
Alec's dishwasher videos are based on some rather primitive dishwashers. For instance he talks about his test unit not flushing out the spray arms, but Bosch/Siemens filters the water going to the spray arms so it wouldn't recirculate dirty water anyways. Same deal with the prewash. Bosch uses a turbidity sensor to determine how many "prewash" cycles to run and when to reuse the water, something his test unit very clearly does not.
I know this type of person very well. They always have some reductionist approach to things, where for them, the expensive stuff is mostly marketing with added bells-and-whistles and largely works the same. My experience is that this isn't quite right. Some brands do have a premium that is more related to style/status but if you buy some seriously engineered stuff it will work much better most of the time.
For reference I'm pretty cheap too but try to be pragmatic. My fridge is a $600 Frigidaire (AEG/Electrolux) top freezer unit. The main selling point was that another youtuber (an appliance repair guy by trade) pointed out that it still has a mechanical timer. They get mocked by appliance sales droids but the top freezer design is significantly more efficient than the alternatives and the lack of electronics mean that you're more likely to be able to repair it.
I agree that KitechnAid is more on the higher-end side, he even said himself that it's kind of a premium device. It doesn't surprise me, because at some point in your life you want to stop with the frugality shenanigans and just want stuff to work if you can afford them.
To be clear that's not a critic, I tend to be as cheap as can be reasonable as well, it's generally a decent way to proceed, to avoid overpaying for useless over-marketed, over-engineered stuff. I'm just trying to give some context but I think we are in agreement anyway and I do believe anyone who watches him long enough will get the gist of it at some point.
have you watched his videos? dude is on the spectrum.
to be clear, he makes good vids. but his fascinations exist for a reason.
He is known as Angry Dishwasher Man for a reason.
I'm also firmly in the camp of having a flat cutlery compartment at the top and not that inefficient, and uncivilized, scarring, basket in bottom section.
Until seeing that video I thought I was crazy. I've found my master.
There will be instances when both are just full and you still end up visible filth, but even then, you at least have to go just once into clear-out mode. It works out great so far. If it didn't... well, I guess I'd need to buy a third one ;-)
It seems so arcane for the operator to have to do this before running a cycle
Pods are a different story.
At some point, I'll maybe post up the pics of repairing the door hinges - previously it was leaking badly because the chunky metal hinges had cracked and bent, pushing the door up enough to not squash the bottom lip seal. Unobtainable parts now, but if you have a welder...
If you don't use a JTAG cable and a MIG welder on the same project in the same day, can you really call yourself "full stack"?
Simply changing back to powder completely stopped the error and the leaking and this was in a 1 year old dishwasher
Dishwasher detergent doesn't make suds. Dish soap does. Are you sure you're using the correct stuff? Or prewashing the dishes for some reason and not getting all the soap off?
is my experience of dishwashers extraordinary ?
https://youtu.be/Ll6-eGDpimU?t=718
Or did they not test the "putting some powder into the prewash" thing and so it was just "powder released all at once" vs "tablet released all at once".
Even there I'd expect some mild improvement from the powder mixing more easily than a plastic wrapped tablet (though maybe if the content inside is liquid this factor is reversed?).
Does this mean the big corps do have some chemical advantage that cancels out the crappy delivery mechanism?
Or does it mean that a mechanical spray prewash step isn't meaningfully improved by chemicals in most circumstances?
I was more alarmed by the wrappers being plastic. I had assumed they were some clever biodegradable thing but they're not.
Perhaps part of the issue is that the presenter in the video is using a somewhat primitive machine.
They are more expensive, but I buy them on sale at Costco for about $16/100, so at $0.16 per load I really don't care if powdered detergent is only $0.03 per load or whatever.
There is clearly a revealed preference for pods among consumers for these things, and "proving" that everyone is wrong for liking them is just not a very interesting exercise imo.
But you can buy a large box of generic and very cheap no-bullshit pods at Costco, and simply put two or even three of them in a load.
If you're going the multi-pod route, you can put one in the dispenser and one or more right in with the dishes.
I like pods because there is less of a chance my clumsy self, or younger kids can accidentally spill costly soap for my dog to try to lick up or overfill the dispenser. My dishes are almost never caked in fats and oils when I put them in. I do not use a pre-wash. If I do I break a pod in half and toss in the bottom.
This guy makes me roll my eyes. There is nothing more exhausting than a self-assured YouTuber lecturing others as if he has all the right answers. He is not wrong per se but not everyone has their own preferences and needs.
There's always chances with everything in life.
Perhaps teach/practice with your kids to be less clumsy - that will pay a lot more dividends than just using pods.
But he said that almost as a throwaway, with almost no explanation of his methodology in determining this, nor discussion about how common this problem might be.
One aspect I like about it is that they have a fragrance-free variant, and even the "fragrance" one is not too bad. A second aspect I like is that it's biodegradable, et cetera. So a bit lighter on the environment, I hope, and the SDS is prominently available on the website.
I think another thing which is under-appreciated is that you need to know how to do the basic cleaning chores for your dishwasher-- for example if it has a filter, learn to clean it! Otherwise its ability to clean will probably be compromised.
I wish the description of the video was like an abstract.
YMMV. Based on the earlier videos, I did switch back to powder, and I did follow the steps of putting some powder in the main compartment for the pre-wash. And i did try several powders.
Yet, none of the powders were anywhere near as good as the tablet we use.
It also doesn't contain any nasty chemicals, unlike several of the powders[1].
So we went back to our tablets. It might cost slightly more, but hardly a significant expense by any stretch.
Now, there might be some powders that work better which aren't available here in Norway. But I gotta work with what I got.
[1]: https://www.forbrukerradet.no/siste-nytt/test-av-oppvaskmidd...
It's good to know there's another HN poster out there like me who doesn't mind using Electron.
The worst thing by far about the pods though is the smell. I don’t know why anyone would want to eat off a fragranced dish but that is the vast majority of the market I guess.
In terms of powder I use seventh generation fragrance free and I have no issues with it.
[0]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04
Not sure if water can be introduced to bind the press, or maybe some other material.
This guy has been incorrect in his yt posts so many times, I simply do not believe him anymore.
He is all about monetization and doesn't care about truth or accuracy.
I strongly doubt the stuff is good for your skin, so I've only done this a few times.