I have had my boat long enough to have several different motors hangin of the back of it . At one time I had a tired 2.4 200 on there and in 2000 mercury had some 1998 leftover 2.5 150 pro max short shaft motors with sportmaster lower 1.87 gears and a stupid good deal a 7 grand in the crate . Well... People told me how much better my boat would handle with the 15in motor and with the 2.5 I would pick up bottom end with the larger displacement and prolly notice little performance difference from my 2.4 because they were underrated on power. It did not tAke very long to realize that was all a crock of poop . You could not tell any difference in handling and if the 150 was underrated so was the 200 and every other motor out there . I ended up yanking that pro max off there because for me after having 200 or more hp I just missed the performance too much and knew I would never be happy with it. Your talking about a 25 horsepower difference stock and on our boats that is a noticeable performance difference with both running properlly,propped properly,etc. if you wring your boat out on a regular basis and like to go as fast as your equipment wil go , it's hard to go backwards on the power
