Echo vs Husqvarna vs Stihl - here's my take. I've never made a living with a chainsaw. I use them to cut firewood for my house and to maintain the property that I hunt and cut on. In recent years, I've started doing volunteer work for a local disaster relief organization as well. Having said that, I HAVE made a living with power tools and hand tools. I put myself through college working on construction crews. While in college, I did my work-study in the schools machine shop. Once I had enough hours and experience under my belt, I started working as a machinist instead of doing construction. After getting my engineering degree, I spent over a decade doing a LOT of equipment repair working for automotive suppliers. What I've learned is this. When it comes to tools, harbor freight tools will frequently do the job just fine, but the name brand stuff is SO much more comfortable and efficient to use that they make the job go a lot more smoothly. I've noticed the same thing on chainsaws. Regardless of your application, if you're only running a saw for one or two hours at a time, almost any saw will do just fine. Regardless of how frequently you run them, if you run them all day long, a "good" saw makes the day go a lot better. If you rarely use more than one tank of fuel at a time, it's perfectly fine to save money and buy a "home owner" grade. If you're running the saw all day long, spend the money and buy a "professional" grade saw of your favorite color combination. The saw should be sized correctly for the bulk of the work you're going to do, and you want something that has one of the best power to weight ratio's in its class, and good AV. As to which brand, its' largely irrelevant. You need an actual dealer near buy to get parts from over the years or do BASIC maintenance if you're not going to do it yourself. Other than that, its a draw. Accross the board, I would tend to stay away from "brand new" models because they are prone to have a few glitches when they hit the market.
