So I went to see the Oreck pod in person today as my local store just got them in. Overall, its a nice vacuum. It's very lightweight, coming in at under 6 lbs. The floor nozzle and smaller turbo brush are indeed electric powered, as evidenced by the electrical pins on each. When I demoed the pod, it picked up everything the rep put down on the carpet, including sand and some type of synthetic fur to resemble cat hair. It was easy to push on low pile carpet and only slightly more challenging on deeper pile carpet, but that could have been because the small carpet square moved around on the floor. I dont know how it would perform on shag carpet though, but I don't think I would attempt using and rotating brush roll on shag. The vacuum. Also has a high and low setting. I wouldn't say its overly loud on high, but its not exactly hushed quiet either; somewhere in the middle. It revs up so to speak when you change from low to high. It also has a nice battery indicator and changes from a green light to red when it needs to be docked and charged.
I don't like that the floor nozzle rotating brush cannot be turned off, but that's no different than any other Oreck cleaner. It cleaned up debris on hard floors very well. The smaller turbo brush was very nice and didn't bog down a bit on the carpeted stairs I tried it out on. Also, the PODs themselves are very clever and easy to change out. Once full, they are supposed to seal shut and you can then turn the holder upside down and it easily slides out into the trash.
I will say that I would have bought it right then, but the rep was unwilling to throw in the wall mount tool caddy for free. They claimed it was $59.99, which seems quite high. It wasn't in stock but they could order it. Most vacuum dealers are used to wheeling and dealing on prices, or so I thought, but after a call to her manager, they still would not allow the tool caddy for free. I distinctly heard the lady on the other end of the phonecsay no. Its a shame they would let a customer walk over the $60 caddy when they could have sold me a $500 vacuum, but perhaps I was asking for too much? I didn't think I was, but oh well. Maybe I'll consider the vacuum at a later date.