By the specs, it's lighter and more powerful than the ms150T. Just my feeling that echo will price it to compete with the MS150t, which is 569.00 in Canada, which I'm willing to pay for that caliber of saw.
The problem is that echo has to fit it into its line up with its existing arborist saws. Typically price rises with power and displacement, but this saw, if priced to compete with the 150T, would be priced higher than the 355T, "their crowning achievement", which I think is a great saw for the money, I used to own one, now have a 200T.
From a marketing prespective, to compete with Stihl, I see echo ditching the 303T and the 271T. Relegating the 355t to compete with the 193T, selling the 2510tes and developing a new mag cased top handle on par with the 201T/540xp.
Now this is of course if echo wants to "get serious" about chainsaws in north America. It seems to me that they make a good product that competes with models 2 generations past and are still catching up.
Not echo bashing, I own a tc210, and a ppt-280 which I believe echo makes the best in class for those tools.