I picked up my Echo cs 352 because I was struggling with my big Jonny due to some nerve problems and arthritis in my neck. It was the biggest displacement saw I could get which weighed in under 10#. The plastic handle hasn't given me any trouble, and the saw really woke up once I gutted the catalytic converter out of the muffler. It might have some more grunt left on tap if I opened up the exhaust outlet, but I wasn't sure what the cat-delete would do for tunability when I did it so I didn't go crazy. EPA regs require limiters on the carb screws now, so if you do modify anything, you'll need to remove those in order to tune it. It's not too tough to fix, but something you need to be aware needs doing.
Anti-vibe on modern saws is leaps and bounds better than even 20 years back. I'm still vibration sensitive in my hands and I have no issues running a saw, but a weed whacker with a brush blade is a huge no-go. I got my Echo brush cutter because my hands wigged out and were twitching for nearly a day after using an old Stihl straight shaft with brush blade for 20 minutes clearing an overgrown field. In fact, I didn't even get it done before my hands made holding anything steady impossible.
You can mod a wild thing, and they do have some potential to wake up. I've muffler modded a couple of them with good results. Brad Snelling even ported one once. We're saw junkies first, brand snobs second.
Most of it's just clean ribbing. I don't think it'd be met well if someone laid into you for using a cheaper saw because you needed to. That's not good form, and this group is better culled than that.
I hope you can find a workable solution to get back out in the woods.