I was a long-time adherent of powder for all the reasons in the video. I used the Seventh Generation powder that is widely available, or once was. One day I couldn't find it, so I got Cascade Free & Clear Pods. I was completely blown away by how much better the pods work. And they work faster, too, because my dishwasher cycles are based on water clarity and they end sooner if the detergent is working faster. So I permanently switched, nevermind the cost difference.

Perhaps part of the issue is that the presenter in the video is using a somewhat primitive machine.

We attempted an experiment in our own dishwasher after the video, trying Cascade Platinum boxed powder (only stuff available here) and Cascade Platinum Plus pods (which we had been using before). The experiment showed that, for our dishwasher and our water, the pods just worked significantly better. The main difference was in the silverware (tiny bits would occasionally be left with the powder).

A couple of months into the experiment with the powder, the dishwasher started to smell a bit foul, which usually indicates time to clean the filters, which I did. But this happened vastly sooner than I was used to with the pods.

Even if the powder's performance sucks intentionally because Cascade made it worse now, as a sibling comment suggested, ultimately that's the only powder option still available here.

I used pods and tried out powder after one of his previous videos on this, it was pretty terrible even following his advice and using rinse aids.

I like chocolate milk, made by mixing chocolate powder (Nesquik) into milk, and somehow everything except pods manages to leave a film of the chocolate powder over everything. I haven't watched this video yet, but my suspicion is he's using bad pods - ones that really are just packaged detergent without the extra chemicals they often include in the pods nowadays.

Same here. Tried using just power, and his other advice and it didn't work out. Didn't clean as well and many dishes (especially plastic) ended up with a white film despite trying multiple brands of powder and dish dry solution.

I wonder if part of it is differences in water hardness and such.

Because the pods are so much more expensive, it means they make more money on them. There’s a very real incentive for the companies to intentionally reduce the performance of the powders just so they can sell more pods (as people notice the performance difference, they think it’s because powder is naturally inferior instead of being manipulated into being so).

In the video he ran a similar test and had similar results. IIRC his conclusion was that the manufacturer is deliberately sabotaging the performance of powders in order to direct more sales to the higher margin pods.

It's also why he's endorsing a new powder product he was involved in developing: it performs as good or better than the pods.