Shortly after posting my review of ProWash laundry detergent, I received an offer to review WIN high performance sport detergent, another product targeted at the apparently much sought-after demographic of sweaty, stinky athletes. I agreed to the review (of course), but with two laundry-related posts in the space of six weeks, I fear that I might be morphing into the Martha Stewart of endurance bloggers - so let’s just knock this one out quickly and move on.
I won’t bother to retell the story of why I defer all smell-related assessments to my superhero wife – that’s in the ProWash review if you need a reminder. I’ll just tell you that I’ve been using Win (sometimes written in all caps on the website, other times not; I’m not positive which one they’ve officially settled on) for the past few weeks in the same manner that I used the ProWash, with similar results.
WIN makes my workout clothes smell great after going through the wash. Under the circumstances, there was an obvious question that needed to be asked, which led to the following exchange between my wife and me:
Wife: I used that WIN stuff with this load of clothes.
Me: How did it work?
Wife: Pretty well, I think.
Me: Better then the ProWash?
Her: Um … I can’t really tell.
I guess the take home message is that there is more than one product on the market specifically designed to clean athletic clothing. Whether you can actually tell a difference between any of them is up for debate; if my bloodhound of a wife couldn’t distinguish them, I’m betting that you won’t notice a huge discrepancy between brands either. So you’ll need to weigh some other factors in your decision-making process.
How about marketing? While the ProWash website features testimonials from satisfied everyday athletes (such as, ahem, me), WIN promotes itself as the official detergent of the US Olympic Team – which begs a couple of questions: 1) Do Olympic athletes smell worse than regular schmoes like us? Because I’ve been on some post-race buses where the lingering funk was almost deadly. I can’t imagine what world-class funk would do to me. Also, 2) Was there a competition for the Olympic Team detergent? Wouldn’t it have been cool to see some kind of televised contest between ProWash, WIN, and that hyperkinetic OxyClean dude? We could have called the show Laundromat Idol, and I would even have volunteered my wife to be the Kara DioGuardi of the judges panel.
OK, so maybe marketing isn’t the deciding factor (although, since I mentioned it, the WIN website has some pretty cool press coverage in its buzz section) – so let’s break it down by cost. In the ProWash review, I linked to the best price I found: three 24-oz bottles for $23 at Amazon.com. WIN is also sold in bulk on Amazon at eight 21-oz bottles for $46 – so by volume, it looks to be a better bargain (that’s 27 cents per oz for WIN compared to 32 cents for ProWash, for any of you math-challenged readers out there).
Finally, by now there have been enough of these detergent reviews on various blogs for one additional message to register: there’s really no excuse for your workout clothes to reek anymore. Try one of the products I’ve reviewed on this site, or take the suggestions of people who have left comments on the review posts (my reviews or anybody else’s), and take it upon yourself to do away with the exercise funk once and for all.
If you’re like me, with a spouse at home who has long suffered with your stinky self, chances are that she’ll be grateful to you for making the switch.
See previous product reviews on right sidebar. If you have a product you'd like reviewed, contact me at info@runningandrambling.com.
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