"Jim" wrote in message

I haven't bought a chainsaw in years, but I've always been a fan of
Stihl. Over the years, their quality in chainsaws, weedeaters & such
has been good & their parts have been available. Like all the others
now, they clutter up new saws with so many safety devices that they're
tough to use, but I think they still have pretty good quality control.

If you do some homework you'll discover that quite a few of the different
brands of smaller chainsaw--those not generally considered industrial or
professional in usage--are produced by the same manufacturer. The quality
range is different in this group from the professional saws, so it is
difficult if not impossible to draw correlations w/r/t quality and
durability between, say, Stihl's professional saws and those bearing their
name for the home user market.

My advice is to ask the multibrand dealer which saws have the lowest
return/repair rate and buy that one.

Max