[cosmodisk]

Having used quite a few different brands over years,I'd say that most of the more expensive ones are just good enough.All the nitty gritty details why Makita does a better job than HILTI or that Milwaukee will last forever are mainly personal experiences.

[mntmoss]

With most categories of gear, there's a sharp quality threshold that hits below a given price range, and once you are above it, you need not go further to do professionally useful work. It's been a helpful rule of thumb for me.

[HeWhoLurksLate]

Personally, I'm biased towards Milwaukee's RED Fuel cordless stuff, because I used a cordless hammer drill of theirs at work and it lasted hours, which signaled to me that if something like a hammer drill going through 1-1/2 foot concrete continuously can last a long time, then a normal drill or an impact driver probably won't die on me while working.

I do like the grips and ergonomics of some brands more than others.

[cosmodisk]

I used to work for a plumbing company,which was divided into two divisions: mechanical ( heavy pipework, industrial heating and any other big stuff) and the rest(household heating, general plumbing,etc.) The mechanical division swore by Milwaukee.They had it all. The rest of us had anything from Makita to Hitachi. Still, something thst got stuck in my memory: a colleague was using high end Hilti power drill to drill holes in ceiling.He did hundreds of holes a day.The drill, despite its superior design kept failing because of concrete dust falling into the drill.Hilti failed to address this when asked how to deal with this,so the guy ended up putting a plastic pipe cover on his drill to protect its internals from getting all the dust.. Worked pretty well.