First Impressions -
At first glance, this saw has everything you'd want and expect. Look closer and things start to unravel.
The plastics are brittle garbage — that thin, shiny kind that feels cheap and poorly fitted from the moment you touch it. The fuel and oil caps will crack in no time, and the retaining tabs inside the tank are too short, making filling a chore. Amusingly, they include spare throttle and choke levers in the box. Make of that what you will.
Products like this are aimed squarely at the novice, hence the bag full of tools, including an abysmally bad sharpening file.
It's up to the customer to finish the assembly, the dogs are threaded into plastic with self-tappers. Yeah, that's going to last. And check out the amount of tolerance factored into the bottom bolt hole.
This saw has an outboard clutch and chain brake, which isn't my preference, but I've dealt with that before on the 009L. And this is where my patience ran out.
With an outboard clutch setup, you'd typically expect a front-mounted chain tensioner on the saw body. So why — WHY — would they fit a side-mounted tensioner to the clutch cover? Getting the rear of the cover seated, slotting the brake band over the clutch, clearing the bar stud, and aligning the tensioner into the bar slot, all at once, was a nightmare. It took far longer than it should have. If it's that hard for someone with chainsaw experience, how on earth would the novice fare?
Worse, once the bar was installed, the cover wouldn't sit flush — the bar is simply too thick. That's not just an annoyance. That's a safety issue. At this point, I was starting to genuinely hate this thing.
As mentioned earlier, this saw is supposed to have an adjustable oiler — like a pro-grade Stihl. Sure enough, there's an oil adjustment symbol on the underside of the saw. No slot to actually turn it with a screwdriver, though. Not surprised.
Once assembled — which the marketing material promises is quick and easy — I filled it with oil and fuel. H-YEEU recommend a 25:1 mix, which I ignored. It's not 1990, so I ran my usual Stihl HP Ultra at 50:1. With the carb primed and choke on, the engine popped on the third pull. One more pull with the choke off and it was running. It took a moment to settle, but quickly found a smooth idle.
And then the kicker:
the chain brake doesn't work. The engine will accelerate straight through it. That is not okay. You can forgive cheap plastics. You cannot forgive that.
Am I being harsh? Yes and no. I'm coming from German and Swedish tools built to a certain standard, and I'm aware that colours my view. But here's the thing — people who buy cheap tools often have no idea how large the gap really is between something like this and a Stihl or Husqvarna. And I don't just mean how it looks and feels, but functionality, usability, work efficiency, and above all, safety.
At $72 versus $700, you can't reasonably complain about material quality. Better plastics, rubberised grips, and precisely fitted parts cost money — that's just the reality. But you can absolutely complain about safety. If Stihl and Husqvarna are held to a safety standard, everyone selling into the same market should be too. A non-functioning chain brake isn't just a quality issue, it's a dealbreaker.
As for the price gap itself, it's multi-faceted. Yes, you pay a brand premium — that's true of any consumer product and always will be. But the rest of that gap buys you a genuinely better tool in every meaningful dimension: better materials, safer operation, easier maintenance, and longer service life. Add dealer support — servicing, spare parts, warranty — and the picture gets clearer still. Where do you take this saw when it breaks down? Are parts even available? No. You bin it and start again. And if it fails catastrophically and puts you in hospital, who's picking up that bill? Someone in a warehouse in China? Amazon?
From here, I'll be putting it through its paces and seeing how it stacks up against the other saws in the collection.
