You are lacking in your judgment!
I'm lacking in judgement? Well, lets take a deeper look at who might be lacking in judgement. Recently, on another thread, Andyshine's video was posted comparing his Echo 590 and his ported Stihl 361. Here is the vid:
Brad had this to say about that comparison: "Sorry but those two saws aren't near as close as that video would suggest. The 361 wasn't tuned near to potential, and that size wood isn't big enough to show the difference."
I responded with: "Posts like this is why I have to take everything you say with a grain of salt. Are you seriously attempting to justify why these two saws were so close? The fact that the 590 is a MM'd homeowner saw and the 361 is a ported pro saw makes your statement so ridiculous it's laughable. THESE TWO SAWS SHOULD NOT EVEN BE CLOSE!
The 361 sounded a little rich but cleaned up pretty nice in the cut but my hearing isn't great. You could also make the same point for the 590. It was almost brand new (on it's second tank) and was tuned a little rich as well. Your bias is so glaringly obvious to everyone but you."
Making excuses for why a brand new, $400 homeowner saw cut close to a ported pro saw is absolutely ridiculous and someone like Brad should know better. I don't think it's unreasonable to question his judgement.
EDIT: And let's call this comparison what it is: Not just close, but both saws appear to be able to make that cut in real close to 4 seconds. I don't have good ears but it clearly sounds to me like the 361 has the 590 beat when it comes to "out of the cut" RPM's. But in the cut, where torque matters, the Echo appears to even the score. If we were doing a blind comparison, everyone would guess the Echo to be a $700-$800, high end saw by the way it cut. But because it has the name "Echo" on the side, the saw snobs turn their noses up and try to explain why it can't do what it's actually doing.