Do yourself a favor and buy a Stihl. After about 5 hours of use, my Echo will not go full throttle any more. That is using pure gas, run on a regular basis, etc. Echo products are generally top notch and my Echo string trimmer still works like a champ. Come to find out Echo has the aforementioned problem with their leaf blowers. All of the yard/landscape folks around here use Stihl. Spend the money and have no worries. Just my .02.