You don’t have to spend a fortune on laundry detergent to get your colors to sparkle and whites to gleam. In fact, Costco sells a relatively cheap detergent that, for the third straight year, has been deemed the “best value” for your money, Consumer Reports says.
Kirkland Signature Ultra Clean Liquid took the top honor for the best value overall in CR testing, which included more than 60 detergents. Kirkland Signature is a Costco store brand.
When testing detergents, CR staffers laundered fabric swatches saturated with blood, body oil, chocolate, coffee, dirt, grass and salad dressing.
CR notes that Kirkland Signature Ultra Clean Liquid is about half the price of higher-scoring detergents from Persil and Tide, making it a good value.
It gets the “highest possible marks” for salad dressing and cleans well in hard water. However, CR says it “doesn’t pack the same punch” as some competitors when it comes to coffee, blood and grass stains.
The big winners in the latest CR analysis were:
- Best Value: Kirkland Signature Ultra Clean Liquid
- Best for Baby Clothes: Kirkland Signature Ultra Clean Free & Clear
- Best for Sensitive Skin: Persil ProClean for Sensitive Skin
- Best for Most Tough Stains: Persil ProClean Stain Fighter
- Best for Tough Stains and Hard Water: Tide Plus Ultra Stain Release
- Best Laundry Detergent Pods: Tide Hygienic Clean Heavy Duty 10X Power PODS and Tide Ultra Oxi with Odor Eliminator Pods.
After completing testing, CR reached an interesting conclusion, according to a summary of its findings:
“Our tests reveal there’s a chasm between the best liquids, pods/packs, and laundry detergent strips, the latter of which tested so poorly in our labs that we don’t recommend them.”
CR acknowledges that because strips use less plastic, they are better for the environment. However, it says strips “seem to lack the ingredients or concentration levels to do the job.”
CR also identified three detergents that ranked especially poorly: Arm & Hammer 4-in-1 Power Paks, Era 3X Oxibooster and Sun Triple Clean.
For more Kirkland Signature products worth considering, check out “11 Name Brands Behind Costco’s Generic Products.”
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