It all depends on hard you wanna work, If your using a hand pole saw for a lot of limbing you are a bad dude. Mine is the HT131 and it will cut anything you got, I even run a 14 inch bar on mine. It will not bog down even when it's buried. I have cut some big limbs with mine. I even took a dead blackjack oak tree down with it. [except the trunk] I really like mine, If you figure what it would cost for someone to come and trim all your trees you would come out cheaper with the saw. I know that's what i did when all my big oaks needed trimming. I did trim them as far as i could reach and their was some big limbs. Stihl makes a 45 degree adapter for it, I was gonna get one but they are 200 bucks.