Your “real” printer must be something special. I don’t have one, so I can’t show you, but the last time I checked, the Ender 3 has a Z-Axis Limit switch. The strategy is to move the Z-Axis down until the switch is triggered. Tell me, if you are blind, and someone moves you to an unfamiliar place while you sleep, how do you orient yourself?
The stepper feedback needs a few cycles to be enabled. Sure, it could, and in most cased should not move the printhead so far up. But that could potentially lead to a smaller build volume.
You should not move any axis super fast by hand, that will in fact create a high back voltage. But I guarantee you, they tested the hell out of the stepper controllers, ensuring that the slow homing sequence would not cause any issues.
Well, something must be up, either in your surrounding or something hardware related. But since you did not share any print failures or specific issues/followup, there is nothing anybody can do to help. (Still no reply on this ticket)
Let us know if you are going to keep the printer and need any assistance.