I use more or less liquid for larger or smaller loads. And the liquid pours more uniformly, so I don’t get a clump dropping into the washer, messing up the amount I want.
Maybe I should have switched to liquid dishwashing detergent. 
I wonder how it compares cost-wise.
My laundry detergent is in a place that’s really easy to grab, though, so there’s less of a difference between grabbing a pod in my fingers and fishing out the whole container.
I got a tub of pods earlier in the pandemic because that’s all I could find, and I actually don’t like them. They barely fit in the dispenser (I have a small 18" wide dishwasher so the soap dispenser should be smaller too) and I have to get it in there juuuuuust right or the flap won’t latch. Also when loading the dishwasher your hands tend to get wet, and as soon as you touch a pod with wet hands they get sticky which makes it harder to get them into the dispenser and not tear them open.
The main thing pods can’t do is adjust the amount of detergent, so you’re likely using too much unless you’re always washing a completely full load with a bunch of pots and pans. Liquid and powder let you adjust. I’d been using Cascade liquid and switched to powder to see if I liked it better. Theoretically the powder and pods should be the most effective because there’s a few chemicals that break down when they’ve been dissolved in liquid for a long time (reviews and Consumer Reports seem to bear that out, though Cascade Complete liquid usually comes out on top compared to other liquid detergents). I honestly don’t see any difference between them, nor do I see a difference with a soapy pre-wash or not. Price is about equivalent by weight, though with the liquid you’re paying for water too, so the powder should go farther by using less of it. The only thing none of them can ever do is completely get rid of the ring around the inside of my pasta pot. That always requires a little scrubbing before or after.
I’m frugal too and like you I also tip well and pay more for quality. I buy experiences, not things. This enabled me to retire very comfortably at 56 last year. I am hardly extravagant. For me, the slight bit of convenience is worth eight cents whenever I do a load.
It never really occurred to me to look at the price delta until yesterday when you claimed, without evidence, that it was “a LOT more expensive” to use the pods which is objectively false. If you had said that it was only a bit more expensive but you are mainly sticking to the box of powder because of principle, I would have totally understood. I do similar things although it happens not to be dishwashing soap.
Well, I’m not a mathematician, but it depends on how you look at it. Using your numbers, the pod is only 5 cents more per load. But it is 62.5% pricier.
Sort of… mine (a 2019 model) has all the lines for the powder along with a pre-wash depression, but in the manual, it very explicitly says that they recommend pods, not powder.
Personally, I like the idea of not having to fool with it, and just putting in a pod for each load.
I used Cascade powder for decades, and not just for washing dishes. It’s a fine soap when washing laminate or tile floors, a bit sprinkled on a damp sponge does a superb job of getting scum off sinks/tubs/toilets/tile walls, etc. I appreciate when product X means I don’t have to also keep on hand products Y and Z.
And those different uses require different amounts, not always using 2.8 tablespoons or whatever it is a pods has.
Another anecdata point. My dishwasher (two-year old Kitchen-Aid) has one detergent slot.
For those interested, here’s a new article in ProPublica about the manufacture of Cascade.
I had to buy the reviled “tabs” recently because the grocery store where I did my shopping doesn’t carry Finish powder (they have Cascade powder, which I don’t like as much). So I got a box of Finish tabs rather than bothering to make an extra stop at another supermarket.
Meh, they work. But they are individually foil-wrapped, and you have to unwrap them before popping them in. Hardly a “convenience”. Also, the water around here is fairly hard, and since one antidote to hard water is using more detergent, this favours powder, where you can control the amount. Anyway, even powders are less than ideal now that phosphates have been eliminated, so Wolfpup Labs™ will continue testing powder vs tabs.
Try Finish Quantum. They’re packets not tabs, wrapped in plastic which dissolves (so you better not pick them up out of the box with wet hands). They work great. I buy a great big box of them and don’t have to think about dishwasher soap for weeks.
Or any of the Cascade tabs; they are also not individually wrapped.
Yeah, I’ve tried three brand of tabs, now. None were individually wrapped. That sounds like a nuisance.
Finish powder is available at Amazon for a great price, fyi.
Well, it’s an unexpected extra step, but hardly that big a deal. On the positive side, the watertight foil packs are protective. If the tabs are packaged in cardboard boxes, which I believe most of them are, they could be spoiled by water damage, which is a possibility under the kitchen sink where they’re usually kept.
In my experience, the dishwasher tabs (or the clothes washer tabs) come in a plastic pouch or a plastic bin, not a cardboard box.
They often do, yes, but I’ve seen unwrapped tabs in plastic pouches, plastic tubs, and also cardboard boxes, like this one:
I had practically a whole box of Finish powder ruined when water seeped into the box.
The first batch i bought came in a nice plastic tub. The next ones came in cardboard, so i dumped them into the plastic bin the others came in.
I did. Both the Finish foil-wrapped tabs I bought earlier and the Quantum pods I picked up the other day work well in my dishwasher. In fact, I think I may have become a believer – I certainly won’t be frantically looking for powdered detergent any more. As an experiment, I’ve been putting in dishes and other items without rinsing as I usually do, and they come out perfectly clean.
Cost-wise, I think the sequence (at least with Finish) is powder, tabs, and Quantum pods in increasing order of cost. However the cost of dishwasher detergent is hardly a major cost item, so my priority is whatever works best. That may well be Quantum pods.
A new twist, and a quick update to the above post, since we sort of digressed into talking about different kinds of detergents. I started experimenting with Finish tabs as well as the plastic-wrapped Finish Quantum pods as an alternative to Finish powder, and I seem to be running into a problem with the Quantum pods. They clean very nicely, but the dishwasher started making strange sounds during the wash cycle. What used to be the steady sound of water became an on-and-off rumble, with high vibration from the pump in roughly 1-second cycles.
I was suspicious that this only started happening shortly after I started using Quantum pods. Also suspicious is that the dishwasher sounds normal again during the rinse cycles, once everything has been flushed.
Tonight I tried using one of the Finish tabs I had on hand – not pods, but the foil-wrapped ones that have to be unwrapped. With the tab the problem doesn’t happen. Dishwasher sounds normal again. I’m sure it would be fine with powder detergent as well, which I’ve been using for years.
It seems that there’s something about the soluble-plastic-wrapped Quantum pods that this old dishwasher doesn’t like, though I can’t imagine what it is. Bit of a relief as I thought the dishwasher pump might be failing.
In the spirit of science, the experimenting will continue and more data will be gathered!
I bought some seventh generation dishwasher pods that i quite like. I notice they also sell powder.