Dawn Face-Off: Ultra vs. Platinum vs. Platinum Plus PowerSuds
Does one kind of Dawn clean better than the others?
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Dawn is probably the first name many of us think of when we talk about dish soap. The Dawn Ultra Dishwashing Liquid Dish Soap was the editor’s choice in our review of of the best dish soaps, but it isn’t the only dish soap the brand makes.
When Procter & Gamble announced a new iteration of the blue-hued soap, Dawn Platinum Plus PowerSuds, we thought, how much better could it really be than the other Dawn dish soaps? According to the Dawn website, the new formula “is made with 2X the suds that trap, lock, and remove up to 99% of grease from the first dish to last” (vs. Dawn Platinum on greasy soil).
- Dawn vs. Dawn vs. Dawn: How Each Dish Soap Performed Price Comparison Which Dawn Is Best? How We Tested
Test by Test Results
Suds test: None of the three dish soaps had any trouble cleaning eight dirty plates with the same bucket of soapy water without having to add any more dish soap. The suds in the bucket from all three models were tinged orange and red from the tikka masala and ketchup I smeared on the plates, but they were as plentiful as before I started this dish-washing test.
When I weighed 2.5 grams of each dish soap into three separate bowls of water and squeezed a sponge through the bowls to create suds, they looked a little lighter in the Dawn Ultra bowl. The bowls with Dawn Platinum and Dawn Platinum Plus PowerSuds looked identical. We reached out to P&G to find out how they found PowerSuds’ suds to be twice as abundant as Dawn Platinum. Their response, in part, said: "Users will notice PowerSuds’ superiority when cleaning a large number of dishes."
Photo: Jodhaira Rodriguez/Consumer Reports Photo: Jodhaira Rodriguez/Consumer Reports
Rinse test: The sponge rinse test was the only evaluation where there was any real difference in performance. The longer it takes to rinse a sponge of dish soap, the more dirty dishes you can clean before you have to reach for more. Dawn Platinum was the only one that rinsed out of a clean sponge in under one minute. Even so, I didn’t need to re-lather my sponge more than the others while I did a sink full of dinner dishes with Platinum.
There was only a 10-second difference between the time it took to rinse each dish soap from the sponges—not very significant.
Washing a greasy pan: The pan I used for frying three beef smash burger patties at home is old, with some scratches on the nonstick surface; it’s long overdue for replacement. I always find that I need to give it a second wash with any dish soap I use at home (not Dawn) because the surface remains slick after the initial scrub. When I washed this greasy pan with the three Dawn dish soaps, my process was no different. Even Dawn’s Platinum Plus PowerSuds formula required a second wash to remove the greasy slickness.
Ease of use: The three bottles are all shaped the same. They are easy to pick up, turn on their side, and dispense soap from. None of the formulas made my hands feel dry after washing dishes with them.
Price Comparison
Most people are probably not calculating how much each squirt of dish soap costs when they’re doing the dishes, but you likely don’t want to be overpaying for such an essential and oft-used product. Dawn Platinum Plus PowerSuds was a little more expensive, per ounce, than the other two Dawn formulations.
| Product | Bottle Size (fl. oz.) | Price per Bottle* | Price per Ounce* |
| Dawn Ultra | 38 | $6.39 | 17 cents |
| Dawn Platinum | 32.7 | $5.84 | 18 cents |
| Dawn Platinum Plus PowerSuds | 38 | $10.45 | 28 cents |
Which Dawn Dish Soap Should You Grab?
After trying all three side by side, I don’t think there’s anything that makes any of these dish soaps stand out from the others. If I had to choose one, I’d probably just go with the least expensive one. Their performance was too similar to justify paying more for one over the other.
How We Tested Dawn Dish Soaps
To test Dawn’s three dish soap formulas, I followed the same methodology I used when I first tested dish soap. I timed how long it took to completely rinse a pre-weighed amount of soap from a clean sponge, noted the suds each soap produced in a bucket of water, how sudsy the water was after using it to wash eight plates with ketchup and chicken tikka masala on them, and how well each cleaned a greasy pan I had just fried a beef burger patty on.
For ease of use, I compared how easily each dish soap was dispensed and if they made my hands feel dry after washing a sink full of dishes with them.
