@jakerocheleau I am glad you asked!!! Biggest difference is hair. A well bred poodle has DENSE curly hair. You have to severely neglect it for them to get matted. Obviously there are badly bred poodles with a soft coat but that's not the norm. Doodles often have combination coats. Some undercoat, some guard hairs...often really soft. The wind changes directions and they are matted. Awful awful hair in comparison.
You can make a well bred poodle look like anything-even another animal lol. it's sooo hard to get a doodles hair to lay right and look good.
The other difference is temperament. I know there are exceptions but poodles are almost always excellent for grooming. Doodles are all over the place. Very hyper, very interested in everything. Very unmanageable most times. It takes a LOT of training for me to make a doodle sit friggin still. Just today I had a 6 month old doodle snarl and snap at me when I touched his feet. The temperament just isn't there because the breeders don't care.
Then it's the owners. Poodle owners generally go into it knowing the dogs are high maintenance- need lots of grooming and training.
Lots of doodle owners are either misinformed by breeders or severely underestimate the amount of work that goes into it. Doodles are like the gateway breed for people who have never had a dog needing grooming. There are exceptions but a lot of the owners have unreasonable expectations. They want the grooms cheaper. They want the hair kept longer. They want to stretch out the time between grooms. And they don't freaking leash train their dogs. Which is the #1 reason I'm not taking any more big doodles right now. I cannot afford to have a back injury bc a 90 lb idiot doodle wants to drag me across the yard to chase a squirrel.
Overall my experience with poodles vs doodles is night and day. For reference I worked as a dog trainer for 3 years before going to school for grooming. Spent a year apprenticing under several great groomers and worked in a salon and vets office before opening my own shop. So over a decade working with dogs in many different capacities.