Obviously, not much, since many people are using them. I prefer sticking to good old-fashioned powder because:
I had a bad experience with the ones I tried once. They were supposedly “lemon scented” and were yellow in colour. Surprise – they turned the inside of my dishwasher’s soap dispenser yellow. It took many many cycles to wash that crap off. Obviously some small amount must also have been getting on everything else in the dishwasher.
In reading reviews, there were a number of complaints about one of the pod types from one of the major brands (can’t remember which one) which allegedly discoloured certain types of dishes – not the kind of thing that encourages one to switch to pods.
Most dishwashers – and certainly mine – is designed to dispense a small amount of detergent in a pre-wash cycle before starting the main wash. The dispenser is divided into two sections for that purpose. With pods, it would be running the pre-wash on plain water.
Sometimes it’s necessary to run the dishwasher with only a few things in it. With powder I can put in less detergent for smaller loads.
Meh, I’m an old traditionalist and dislike change!
This isn’t true, pods are kind of “time release”. The different sections dissolve at different times so allegedly you would get soap throughout the cycles. Obviously I can’t attest to how well this works in practice.
A lot of the rest is personal preference and I can’t fault you there.
That isn’t the way my dishwasher works, but others (especially newer ones) may be different. There is a detergent dispenser with a large section and a small section, and you pour powder into each one. There’s a door that then closes over both, but the part over the smaller section has slots in it, so water starts to wash out that part of the detergent as soon as the washer runs. After the prewash, the door opens and the whole mass of detergent gets dumped in. A pod can only fit in the larger section and would provide no detergent for the prewash.
In this picture you can see them. So the outer section dissolves. The inner blue piece has a coating that wears away during the first wash and then washes during the second cycle (or something like that).
I get that. But it doesn’t matter how the pod is designed. In my dishwasher, the pod is completely inside a closed compartment until the door opens. The prewash depends on detergent from a second compartment, which, if using a pod, will be empty.
The fact that the pod releases detergent in stages is a good feature, but it still renders the dishwasher’s designed prewash cycle pretty much useless unless I also add powder in there.
The video linked upthread involves a guy disproving this idea. They all dissolve soon after the water hits them. The video also shows what @wolfpup says about the compartments. They don’t open on the first rinse. So you either don’t have the pod working on the first rinse or it doesn’t last for the actual washing cycle. Or, I guess, you could use two pods.
I also note that my disagreement here, like before, is not meant to be a lecture. I am not admonishing you.
@puzzlegal: According to the video above, generally the ones that don’t have that expect you to put the pre-rinse detergent in directly, if you actually read the directions. The whole video is about how the pods essentially encourage you to use your dishwasher in a way other than they were designed, which is why so many people get suboptimal results.
His argument is that, if you have to “prewash” your dishes in any way, then your dishwasher is not working at its full potential.
My dishes come out clean so I am not too concerned but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they don’t really work as advertised. I put my pod in the little door section and don’t use the prewash section. I looked at the directions on the tub of Kirkland pods and that’s how they say to do it. That said, the pods actually inside the tub don’t match the type of pod in the instructions which is clearly a supply chain thing.
Aren’t the pods A LOT more expensive than powder? To me, the MINIMAL effort involved in pulling the box out of the cabinet and filling the tray isn’t anything I need to spend money to avoid.
The Kirkland dishwasher pods are 18 cents each. Amazon has a cheapie brand for 13 cents each.
I spent a little bit of time trying to figure out the cost of powder per load. The cheapest dishwasher powder is 16 cents per ounce and it looks like a pod is around half an ounce so let’s say that it’s 8 cents per wash for powder assuming that you only use as much powder that’s in a pod but I bet that most people use more.
So…if you do a dishwasher load once a week and you keep it to half an ounce, you’re saving $2.60.
I want to live at your house! We run it every night (family of four), but the cost is negligible. I use pods, as I’ve only gotten a dishwasher about 5 years ago and that’s what everyone was using. I buy the powder for pre-wash, but this week I decided to buy the liquid instead, and it does the job well. Pods are so convenient.
I make a decent living. I don’t think I am “cheap,” but I DO consider myself frugal. I am very happy to spend money when and where I want to. I gladly overtip for service, and I gladly spend what it costs to buy the goods/services I want.
What I object to, however, is being nickled and dimed on an ongoing basis, simply because some corporation figured out I wouldn’t object to just tossing unnecessary change their way. So - yeah - if I can wash a load of dishes for a nickel rather than a dime, and keep a nickel in my pocket every time I run the washer, that is what I prefer to do.
I’m sorta surprised at how many folk here seem to just think, “It is only a few cents, so I don’t mind giving them to a corporation, whether or not I derive any significant benefit - in performance or ease.” Multiply that few cents by damn near everything you spend money on every day, and over the course of a lifetime it adds up.
Only $18 a year? Make your own choices, but I’d rather use that $18 to buy myself a nice meal, or even give it to a beggar on the street. Multiply that 18 by countless other recurring expenses... In all too many instances, "new and improved" refers to the extraction of from consumers.
And yeah - only 2 of us here, but 1 load a week? Of course, when I lived by myself, my choice was to wash dishes/pans by hand after every use. Not just to save $, but didn’t need/want dirty dishes to sit around until the washer was full. So the price of a squirt of liquid dish soap …
Well, I said I recently switched to pods because I find them more convenient. And the price differential is small, so I’m happy to pay the tiny price for the tiny convenience.
It’s relevant to my particular situation that the place where I kept the box of powdered detergent is tight, and it was a little bit of a nuisance to get it in and out. That obviously doesn’t apply to everyone. But it factored into my decision.
Basically, when I wasn’t going to stores due to the pendemic, I bought a box of pods online because that’s what was available, and after using it for a while, I decided I preferred it.
I do mention convenience as well, so I’m in puzzlegal’s camp. Unlike her, I do not keep it under the sink, though, but on a top shelf in a kitchen cabinet, as I have two young kids, and try to keep chemicals out of their curious reach. So that makes it easy to just grab a pod and feed the dishwasher as opposed to dragging a box down, mess around with pouring too little or too much and spilling some, and then sticking it back on top of the shelf. Yeah, first world problems, but the extra change per pod is worth it for me, and I would consider myself quite frugal, too.
(Though, like I said, I this summer started using the powder for the pre wash sometimes, so I have to figure out some more convenient system for myself. When I’m lazy, I skip the pre wash detergent.)
Haven’t switched over to laundry pods, though. The convenience there isn’t quite as compelling for whatever reason.
