If it were a mower for life you were looking for MF, I would spend the extra $100 and get a lawn marshall mulch and catch. Same thing but with a 159cc cast iron liner motor. Plenty of power and longer engine life.
As you say, you can always swap the disc out later if you found it low on guts.
I have one of these 159cc autochoke loncins on a 19in honda hru19 and can't fault it
Only complaints would be that you can no longer get them down to 1700rpm idle due to lean (and sealed) mixture setting, 2100 is min, and they stumble a bit at idle when cold as the air actuated choke pull off valve doesn't pull the choke off enough for the first 30 seconds
the 123cc and 139cc loncins are a nice motor as well
