I don’t know if this happened here, but sometimes if the soap door is time released water infiltrated the chamber and it cakes up and doesn’t release properly. My observation is this happens less often with pods likely because they don’t dissolve rapidly enough.

The colorful liquids (or equivalent) in the pods are surfactants and other fun things that are not practical to formulate as powders. So they really do clean differently.

Of course, there are other ways to formulate things, but they all have tradeoffs.

Dishwashing powder 100% has surfactants in it.

I can't find any pods that are just water-soluble wrappers of the powdered detergent. All of them have additional compartments in the pods for other chemicals, and all the pods do clean a hell of a lot better than just powdered detergent.

I had switched earlier this year after seeing the Technology Connections video, and I'm ready to switch back. The pods are just better.