One of the magazines did a comparison test on 60 size engines a few years back and the 65 LA was toward the top of the pack as far as power. My experience running a 65LA and a 61FX was that the LA gave up nothing in power. Both are very user friendly-easy to adjust-plenty of power-easy to start. The LA did develop a rattle/knock type noise but that was only at part throttle and did not seem to hurt it's performance. A lot of LA's seem to sound odd after they have a little run time on them.
Fred