I thought I might weigh in with my two-cents on the Oreck question. No brickbats, please. I'm not trying to ruffle any feathers. But here's the situation as I see it.
David Oreck was a marketing man who went, in the 1960's to Whirlpool, after Sears forced them to stop selling vacuums under the Whirlpool name, and bought the rights to Whirlpool's little 'broom vac' they were making for Sears, which became the first Oreck. It was nothing more than a power nozzle motor with a fan built into the pivot knuckle to throw the dirt it inhaled into a little bag attached at the front of the handle. I have the Sears ad for this very machine.
David Oreck is a very good 'marketing man', who tried innovative ways to sell his light weight broom vac. The first thing he had to do was to stop thinking of it as an electric broom, and start calling it a full sized vacuum cleaner. Over the course of the first few years, the Oreck was built in Germany, then by Bissell in America. The handle was made taller (the first Oreck's had short little squat, square handles). But it still retained it's initial design of a power nozzle motor with a belt on one end and a fan on the other. Just a minimum amount of airflow to move the dirt dislodged by the brush into the bag.
Today, Oreck has several different "models" of virtually the same machine. While the XL-21 had a larger suction OPENING and a larger fan chamber, it retains the little power nozzle motor, fan, and belt design of the first Oreck machines (including the XL-21's 3.5 amp motor).
While the design is sufficient for surface cleaning of the rug, the design falls short on suction, using a very fast rotating brush to 'comb' the carpet rather than using high suction to remove the dirt. I find that strong airflow as well as high speed agitation is the best design for rug cleaning.
I went to the Oreck store, curious, because I saw the Television commercial with David Oreck extolling the virtues of his eight-pound wonder. I was in sticker shock over the prices of these machines. The XL-21 was $800, and included a little compact vacuum (with TINY bags) because the upright had no attachments on the machine. I guess to make it eight pounds you have to take OUT something, like attachments, and make everything tiny (like the motor and fan).
The XL-21 has a fan vulverable to damage by hard debris. While it's hard plastic ("kevlar" they called it, which sounds like a made-up name to me), it's still in the path of the dirt. The belt is a simple flat power nozzle belt. Isn't this 2007? Where's the lifetime geared (cogged) belt of other $800 machines?
Then came the REAL shock. The bags. Not just for one vacuum, but for two. The little vac's tiny bags come twelve to a pack for $14. The upright's "celoc" (another made up word if you ask me) bags cost $20 for eight.
I asked them if I could test out the XL-21 on some rice I brought with me, to see "if it would edge clean well". They allowed me to throw the rice down against an edge. The Oreck just pushed it with it's mustache brushes, but didn't inhale it. I could smell the rice it did suck up, after grinding through the fan, and hitting the bag, coming through and out into the air.
I'm, admittedly, a Miele fan. My Miele 217 power nozzle sucks up rice along ANY edge, doesn't grind it through a fan, doesn't let any smells out (the carbon filter doesn't allow it), and the Miele has real, honest to God suction power. I have attachments to clean everything, including bare floors, and my Miele will last every bit of 21 years WITHOUT an annual 'tune up' and the associated hassle and expensve of driving the machine to and from a repair shop all the time.
My Miele will never need a new belt. Nor will the belt burn, crack, slip or break. My Miele is QUIET and the filtration is at the 100% level. Yet, the Miele cost less (by $300) than the Oreck XL-21. My model 514 Miele, in gorgeous Vibrant Red, cost $499 plus tax.
After all that, I decided that if I wanted a light weight vacuum for 'daily' jobs, I could just buy the Miele Universal Upright with a 217 power nozzle. I'd have a two motor machine, with five times the suction of the Oreck, at the same weight as the Oreck, for $500 less than the Oreck.
My personal thought is that the Oreck's price includes about a 50% markup because of all the advertising. I don't feel like paying for television commercials.
