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$1.25 Aldi product 'clear winner' in expert test
A $1.25 product from Aldi’s cleaning range has taken out the top spot in a stain removal test by industry experts Choice, leaving more expensive brands for dust.
Out of 32 different products the German retailer’s wildly popular Di-San Oxy Action with Enzymes Pre Wash Stain Remover was the clear winner with a score of 75 per cent from the experts.
Choice testers threw everything from cooking oil to baby food to chocolate ice-cream at the Oxy Action in the lab but the cheap and cheerful buy proved its effectiveness on most stains, particularly blood, tomato, makeup and mud.
Coles’ Ultra Prewash Stain Remover ($1.30) came in second place with an expert rating of 70 per cent and a special mention regarding its tomato and makeup stain removal properties.
Another Aldi product, the Di-San Ultra Degreaser with Enzymes Pre Wash Stain Remover Lemon Fragrance, rounded out the top three with a Choice expert rating of 69 per cent. It scored well for blitzing tomato and mud stains off the test t-shirts.
At the other end of the spectrum came OzKleen’s Prewash Power which scored just 55 per cent and, at $5.50, is three times dearer than Aldi’s winner.
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Choice’s ‘rigorous’ testing process
“We test ten different types of stains that people commonly get on their clothes, including perspiration, mud, cooking oil, chocolate ice-cream, makeup and blood,” a spokesperson told Yahoo Lifestyle in a statement.
“We use cotton material swatches that have specific formulas of these stains applied to them. Before washing, we apply a set amount of each stain remover to the stained swatch and let it sit for five minutes.
“Then a front loader washing machine and a mid-performing laundry detergent is used to measure the degree of stain removal.”
Di-San Pre Wash Stain Removers: what’s the difference?
Due to their similar names and packaging, there’s been a bit of confusion between Aldi’s pair of pre wash stain removers — some shoppers aren’t even aware of the difference.
To tell them apart you need to look closely at the gold panel on the label: one reads ‘Oxy Action’ while the other is ‘Ultra Degreaser’.
Di-San Oxy Action with Enzymes Pre Wash Stain Remover comes in a purple spray bottle and is generally suited to laundry and shower cleaning.
The Di-San Ultra Degreaser with Enzymes Pre Wash Stain Remover comes in the pink bottle and shoppers have found that it works best for heavy-duty cleaning such as ovens.
This key difference was revealed when one confused mum shared a photo of her oven door to a Facebook hacks group, wondering why her purple Di-San spray — the Oxy Action version — wasn’t doing the job.
“The purple did nothing yesterday, but I found the pink today and within minutes...” she wrote.
Additional reporting by Penny Burfitt.
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