Australia’s best laundry detergent revealed – and it’s only $4

Homeowners spend hundreds of dollars on laundry detergents each year to keep their clothes in great condition, but your favourite brands might be doing less than you think.

A new consumer review, which ranked the best and worst laundry detergents on the market, has revealed some products are only slightly more effective than washing your clothes in plain water. While some of the best detergents were also some of the cheapest.

Consumer watchdog CHOICE tested the cleaning power of 100 detergents on the market. Each product was also given an overall score out of 100.

They also tested how environmentally friendly each product was by running them through a tool to find out their impact on gardens and the impact on recycling at wastewater treatment plants.

The best-rating product was Coles’ Ultra Front product — at a cost of $4 it scored an overall rank of 81 per cent, beating popular brands OMO, Cold Power, Dynamo, Fab, Surf and Radiant.

A Coles spokesperson told Starts at 60: “Coles brand aims to deliver great quality and excellent value and we work closely with our suppliers to deliver outstanding products for our customers.

“In the past financial year Coles brand launched 739 new products and won 110 consumer awards.Our research shows that the popularity of our Coles brand products is continually growing, with the majority of customers buying Coles brand products when they shop with us.”

It was followed by OMO Ultimate Front with a rating of 80 per cent and priced at $21.99. The OMO Ultimate Top ranked third with 64 per cent ($21.99), the Trimat Advanced Laundry Powder Regular Top fourth with 61 per cent ($5.69) and the OMO Active Clean with built-in pre-treatment top fifth at 60 per cent ($10).

The below top loader laundry detergents perform only marginally better than plain water, according to our lab tests.

To avoid dirty laundry, find out which products are the most effective: https://t.co/c7q1CWVlkC pic.twitter.com/xoMkEmP8ei

— CHOICE (@choiceaustralia) August 17, 2018

Surprisingly, some popular household brands ranked last in the review, including Fab Gold Absolute Liquid Top, which cost $8 but only rated 46 per cent overall.

You can read the full list on the CHOICE website here. 

Do you use any of these brands?