some of the old tool makers have divided their lines into industrial and c onsumer with very different results, but the ones you listed are pretty clo se. B&D, although it once made a great industrial line (I have three of the ir industrial drill motors, all 40 years old or more and going strong), is now one of several companies owned by the same conglomerate, and B&D has be en assigned to the consumer market. Still, I have two recent ones, and I ha ve no complaints about them. The same company owns DeWalt, Porter-Cable, De lta, and others. DeWalt is a little higher-end, and Porter-Cable, in the op inion of many,is higher still.
rent market segments. At the premium industrial end you have Fein and Metab o -- and you pay for it. The rest are pretty much head-to-head. (I still fa vor Milwaukee, but that's based on old experience.)I own a Makita grinder a nd a Ryobi belt sander, and both are doing fine after years of heavy use.
you listed. It's a little like cars: nobody can afford to make junk these d ays, unless they don't expect to stay around.
That sounds like a good homeowner's collection of power tools. They're all good brands.
We only had a fairly short period in which the consumer-grade power tools d escended in quality. In the late '70s, US power-tool makers were alarmed th at the Japanese were beating them up. They redesigned their lines to compet e on price -- particularly Sears, Skil, and B&D. Some of the cheaper tools went from ball bearings to plain bearings; Skil and Loctite co-engineered m otors that were glued together; all of them developed cheaper gears. The mo tors were OK but down on power. The gears and bearings were awful. Even the electrical switches were cheap.
That didn't last long. Quality became a big issue, and the manufacturers up graded. Now, as I mentioned, building junk is a good way to go out of busin ess. Word gets around really fast. Junky tools don't last long on the marke t.
So, if you stick with reputable brands, and if you aren't looking for indus trial-type performance, it's hard to go wrong. The individual product repor ts are easy to find online, if you're shopping.