Commercial equipment is rated for hours a domestic version cannot survive, and that rating is what you are paying for. A restaurant fridge holds temperature with the door opening two hundred times a shift; a household one does not. When a café closes and sells its cold room, its espresso machine and its prep benches together, the whole lot usually goes for less than three domestic replacements — and outlasts them.

Check the electrical supply before anything else. Much commercial equipment is three-phase, and most villas and shophouses are single-phase. Upgrading the supply through the utility takes weeks and costs more than the machine. Read the rating plate, note the kilowatts and the phase, and confirm your premises can actually run it.

For power tools, brand matters because of parts and batteries. The mainstream cordless platforms are supported island-wide with batteries and spares; anything outside them means ordering from Java and waiting. Buy into a battery platform you can feed.