By Zach Pozniak, VP of Operations at Jeeves of Belgravia New York and fourth-generation dry cleaner · @jeeves_ny
Last reviewed August 2026 · based on hands-on lab testing of about 78 detergents through 2025 · As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Some links here go to brands directly, and I may earn a commission on those too.
Quick answer: Nellie's POW Powder ↗ scored 55.9 when I ran it through my lab test. Nellie's other powder, the Laundry Soda, scored 18.8 and put the brand on my worst detergents list for 2025. Those are two different products, and POW Powder is the one that cleans.
It is still well short of the top of my board, where Tide Hygienic Pods sits at 100. So if you like what Nellie's do and you want the product in their range that actually removes stains, buy this one. If you are choosing purely on cleaning power, several detergents beat it comfortably.
| Product | Nellie's POW Powder ↗ |
|---|---|
| Performance score | 55.9 |
| Measured against | A board where Tide Hygienic Pods ↗ is 100 and washing with water alone is 1 |
| What is in it | Nellie's classic laundry soda, their oxygen brightener, and an added enzyme called subtilisin. That is how Nellie's describe it. |
| Nellie's other powder | Nellie's Laundry Soda, a separate four ingredient product, scored 18.8 |
| Why I tested it | Nellie's owner brought it to me in New York after the Laundry Soda made my worst detergents list for 2025 |
| What the score covers | Stain removal, and nothing else. Price, formulation, ingredient safety and packaging are still your call. |
Nellie's sell two powders that are easy to confuse. The Laundry Soda is their well known product, a four ingredient powder. POW Powder is the heavier one, and the way Nellie's explain it, POW Powder is that same laundry soda combined with their oxygen brightener, which works as a booster and an oxygen bleach, plus an added enzyme called subtilisin.
That description comes from the brand rather than from me taking the formula apart. What I can tell you is what came out the other end of the wash, and the two products are nowhere near each other. If you want to know what the oxygen bleach half of that mixture does on its own, I have tested oxygen bleaches separately.
I run every detergent through the industry standard laundry detergent testing method. White cotton swatches get stained across several stain families, washed, dried, and then read with a spectrometer that compares the colour before and after, which tells me how much of each stain actually left the fabric. I do not do subjective testing, meaning I do not judge results by eye, because eyes are unreliable. In 2025 I put about 78 detergents from around the world through it, and POW Powder went through the same run as all of them.
One caveat rides on every score I publish, and it carries more weight here than usual: this is purely performance. Price, formulation, ingredient safety and packaging all belong in your decision, and none of them are in this number. Nellie's own position is that their main powder is deliberately gentle rather than powerful, so a stain removal test is not measuring the thing they optimised for. I test stain removal because that is what I think a detergent is for.
At the end of 2025 I published my worst detergents of the year, and Nellie's Washing Soda was on it. I ended that video with an open offer to any brand watching: if you think I am full of it, make a better product and send me the new one, because I only want you to get better.
Nellie's took it personally, and then they did something almost nobody does. Their owner asked to meet me while he was visiting New York and pled his case with some rare self awareness. He told me the basic formula is on purpose: Nellie's is built around gentleness and skin sensitivity, and they are firm believers that most of their customers' clothes are not very dirty. Then he left me a bucket of the product they make for deeper cleaning, POW Powder.
So I tested it, and it came back at 55.9. It is always refreshing when a brand wants to improve their product on the back of customer feedback and objective reviews, and that is what this was. He also mentioned they have some new things in the works. He did not say what, and I have not tested anything else of theirs since.
This gets muddled, so I want to be blunt about it. The 55.9 does not belong to the Laundry Soda. Nellie's did not reformulate the powder that scored badly. They gave me a different product, and that different product scored 55.9. The Laundry Soda's number is still 18.8.
Here is why. Its four ingredient formulation is not enough to get clothes clean, and I would call it a laundry booster rather than a good detergent. That is the verdict I gave it on the 2025 worst list, where it came sixth of the nine products I named going from worst to best, and it is the same verdict I gave at the 2025 award show a few weeks later. Molly's Suds Super Wash Powder has the same problem for the same reason.
It also is not new. Nellie's showed up under disappointments on my 2024 round-up, before the 2025 board existed. Two years, same result.
There is one place the Laundry Soda earns a mention, and it predates all of this. Back in 2023 I looked at whether homemade detergent recipes are worth making, and the worst part of those recipes is the shredded laundry bar, which is designed for hand washing and does not belong in a modern machine. My fix was to swap the bar for a real powdered detergent, and for a simple, safe powder I named Nellie's Washing Soda alongside Molly's Suds and Ingredients Matter. In the same breath I said that anyone going for straight performance should use a Tide or an Ariel powder instead. Both halves of that sentence still hold.
You already buy Nellie's, or you want to, and you need the product in their range that removes stains rather than the one that mostly boosts. These are the only two Nellie's products I have scored, and the gap between them is not subtle.
You are picking a detergent on cleaning power alone. At 55.9 it sits a long way below Tide Hygienic Pods ↗ at 100 and Ariel 2X powder ↗ at 102.4, and there is no version of the maths where a 55.9 beats those on stains.
If cleaning is the whole point, the products at the top of my board are not close to this one, and several of them are cheap. Everything I have scored, with the numbers, sits in my tested laundry detergent rankings.
If what drew you to Nellie's was the gentle, short ingredient list rather than raw cleaning, that is a real preference and there are products that serve it without giving up as much performance. My non-toxic detergent picks and my free and clear picks are both built around exactly that trade.
And if you came here because of one specific stain rather than your weekly wash, a detergent is usually the wrong lever. My lab-tested stain remover rankings cover what actually shifts set-in stains.
It scored 55.9 in my lab testing, on a board where Tide Hygienic Pods ↗ is the 100 point benchmark and washing with water alone is 1. That makes it a detergent that removes a meaningful share of stains, and it is far ahead of the 18.8 I gave Nellie's Laundry Soda. It is also a long way below the products at the top of my board. If you want a Nellie's product that cleans, this is the one. If you want the best cleaning available, it is not.
They are two separate products with two separate scores. Nellie's Laundry Soda is the four ingredient powder that scored 18.8. POW Powder is what Nellie's describe as that same laundry soda combined with their oxygen brightener formula, plus an added enzyme called subtilisin. So POW Powder contains the Laundry Soda rather than replacing it, and 55.9 is the score for the combination, not a new score for the original.
Not exactly. Nellie's did not reformulate the Laundry Soda that scored 18.8. They pointed me at a different product in their range, POW Powder, which is built to clean harder, and that product scored 55.9. Their owner also told me they were working on new things, though he did not say what. So this is a brand answering a bad result with a stronger product, not the same product getting better.
Nellie's Laundry Soda made my worst detergents list for 2025 because its four ingredient formulation is not enough to get clothes clean. I would call it a laundry booster rather than a detergent. It had shown up under disappointments on my 2024 round-up for the same reason. Nellie's owner told me the basic formula is deliberate, aimed at gentleness and skin sensitivity, on the view that most of their customers' clothes are not very dirty.
Nellie's describe it as their classic laundry soda, which is the detergent, combined with their oxygen brightener, which acts as a booster and an oxygen bleach, plus an added enzyme called subtilisin. That is the brand's account of the formula rather than my own analysis of it.
For stain removal, no. It scored 18.8 and I would treat it as a booster rather than a detergent. It has a narrower use that it does fill: back in 2023, when I was looking at homemade detergent recipes, I named it as a simple and safe powder option, and in the same breath I said that anyone chasing performance should use a Tide or an Ariel powder instead. That has not changed.
POW Powder is the Nellie's product worth knowing about. It scored 55.9, it is built from their laundry soda plus their oxygen brightener plus an enzyme, and it does what the Laundry Soda does not, which is remove stains at a level you would expect from a detergent.
It is not a top of the board product and I would not tell you it is. What I will say is that a brand made my worst list, came to argue their corner, and left me something better instead of a lawyer's letter. That is rarer than a good score.
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Zach Pozniak is VP of Operations and co-owner of Jeeves of Belgravia New York, the Madison Avenue dry cleaner serving New York since 1979, and the fourth generation of his family in the trade. Zach posts garment care techniques as @jeeves_ny on TikTok to over 900,000 followers, and his book The Laundry Book, co-written with his father Jerry Pozniak, was featured on Good Morning America in October 2024. Jeeves NY's clients include the Metropolitan Opera, the Met Museum, and FIT, and the business has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and New York Magazine.