Detergents: wash-day winners.(Product/Service Evaluation)

Liquids are big sellers these days, but results from our tests of 19 detergents may make you pick a powder.

Liquids are touted for their convenience: They dissolve instantly even in cool water, and their bottles are easy to carry. Yet with the exception of two excellent front-loader liquids, powders were generally more effective at dealing with the main issue detergents address: cleaning dirty clothes. That said, no detergent--liquid or powder--fully removed all eight of the difficult stains we threw at it.

As for other issues that manufacturers favor--keeping colors from "bleeding" or fading--liquids had a slight edge. For brightening white clothes, the competition between powders and liquids was a wash:

Some did well; some didn't. (Detergents get clothes whiter than white" by using colorless dyes that stay in the fabric, absorb energy from ultraviolet rays, and convert that energy to visible light, seen as a faint blue glow.) All the products kept loosened soil from settling back on clean clothes.

Two liquid detergents--Tide HE and Wisk HE--have a low-foaming formula appropriate for high-efficiency (HE) front-loaders and the few high-efficiency top-loaders on the market. Both proved excellent overall in a front-loader, but when we tried Wisk HE in a conventional top -loader, it didn't clean as well.

HOW TO CHOOSE

Consider powder vs. liquid. If you don't mind giving up a bit of convenience, try a powder. Avoid chalky marks on dark clothes by letting the wash water dissolve the powder before you add clothes. If you choose a detergent with bleach or bleach alternative and aren't sure a fabric is colorfast, test a small amount of the product on a hidden part of the fabric.