For us the results were also unambiguous. The powder was just plain worse, and even with the extra fluid for shine our glasses came out worse. We did follow his advice of adding some powder directly in the machine.
Increasing washing temperature did help some but not enough. After a week my SO had had enough.
Perhaps it's related to the machine and water quality. We have very good and soft water (no salt needed), with very little chemicals. Perhaps another machine and/or different water quality can explain your different experience.
Yeah, I'm not questioning your results. Probably some variation related to the machine, water quality/temperature etc. Which is why I wish forbrukerrådet was more transparent about their methodology. Lot of possible confounders they just don't mention. Which machine(s) did they use? Did they use rinse aid? Salt? Which program? How hard is their water and how hot was it, or did they vary these parameters? How full was the machine? Etc.
My machine is pretty old. Old enough that it has no electronics, just one of those mechanical dials that slowly turns back to "zero" during the cycle. There are no programs really, just the ability to set the dial to various subsets of the full cycle.
It wouldn't surprise me if more modern machines are designed more with tablets in mind than powder. Seeing as it's now the most popular product.
> It wouldn't surprise me if more modern machines are designed more with tablets in mind than powder.
Yeah in comparison ours is a high-end Bosch model that's just a few years old. It has sensors which supposedly detect how dirty the water is and whatnot.
Would be interesting to do a comparison.
For us the main kicker was less of the troubling chemicals. We could have lived with the reduction in washing power had those metrics been inverted.
Increasing washing temperature did help some but not enough. After a week my SO had had enough.
Perhaps it's related to the machine and water quality. We have very good and soft water (no salt needed), with very little chemicals. Perhaps another machine and/or different water quality can explain your different experience.