Washing dishes is a chore no one enjoys, but Choice reckons there are a few brands that will make the tedious task just a little bit easier, and others that perform no better than water alone.

The experts from Choice trialled 38 dishwashing liquids from all the major supermarket brands including Finish, Palmolive, Fairy, Morning Fresh, and Aldi, Coles and Woolworths’ own brands. The products were then rated based on value for money and cleaning performance against identically pre-soiled plates.

Taking out first place was one of the cheapest varieties available – Aldi’s $1.59 Tandil Ultra Power Soak n’ Clean Concentrate Dishwashing Liquid. While coming in at a close second was the $3.25 Morning Fresh Ultra Concentrate Ultimate Lemon.

According to Choice expert Ashley Iredale, the products both performed well, scoring an impressive 90 per cent in Choice’s lab testing, but the final decision came down to value for money. The Aldi Tandil liquid is also safe for greywater and septic tanks and features biodegradable surfactants, unlike Morning Fresh.

“Both products rated very well and outperformed other liquids in the test by a mile – the next closest score was 65 per cent,” he said. “But when it comes to price, Aldi Tandil easily wins on value at just 35 cents per 100ml, compared with Morning Fresh’s 93 cents.”

Iredale said all of the liquids were subject to rigorous testing procedures, which included dirtying the plates with some of the hardest foods to remove to see how the liquids stacked up.

“To test dishwashing liquids, Choice labs pre-soil plates with different types of stains that you’ll usually have to deal with at home — rice starch, bolognese and egg yolk,” he said. “We soak the stained plates in a solution of test detergent for 10 minutes. The plates are placed into a scrubbing device and scrubbed a set number of times with a wet sponge. We use a special device called a spectrophotometer to measure how clean the plate is before and after testing.”

While there were a clear two front runners – the most shocking finding was that many liquids didn’t perform any better than water, with four popular brands scoring just 45 per cent. The dishwashing liquids Choice recommends avoiding are; Fairy Platinum Dishwashing Liquid, Palmolive Original, Uniquely Natural Dishwashing Liquid and Woolworths Essential Dishwashing Liquid.

Iredale also warned consumers that a well-performing brand does not automatically mean others in the range would be just as effective, saying they identified a wide variation of results.

Find out how your favourite dishwashing liquids ranked here.