FWIW, I've used generic foam pods, K&N foam pods, cheap clone pods...What is the result? I spent a bit of money replacing my stock (lost) airboxes and now the bike runs as well as it can. As said by others, the stock airbox does a number of good things. It creates a large pool of still air (A plenum) for best CV slide operation; It makes sure both carbs get the same air pressure, at the same temperature, for equal cylinder performance; The inlet to the carbs is the right length for smooth, laminar flow, allowing the slides to work as designed; Each cylinder pulse draws air through BOTH filters, giving a low restriction to the air coming into the airbox.
If you are running stock CV carbs, the highest, smoothest performance is from the stock airbox. The best way to do any improvement is too replace the stock airbox filter paper element with a lower restriction foam element.
While your bike won't die or completely fail from pods, the performance of pods, in most cases, is worse than stock. In addition, the tuning of the stock CV carbs is next to impossible (only a couple of people know how to do it), and even when done right, they don't perform across all RPM ranges nor have the drivability quality of the stock airbox system.
You are totally free to choose any path you want, but in any case, your bike will never run as well as it does on the stock intake system. Do some reading in the carburetor sections, check out pods, running rich, stumbling, throttle response issues....you will find pods do not really improve running or reliability.
You can put the pods on for a cool look, but be aware that you will degrade the performance.
