Planned obsolescence used to be a dystopian idea. Corporations intentionally making products break after a certain amount of time? That's the plot of some high-concept sci-fi book from last century. Nowadays, this fear is often a reality. Buying a piece of clothing or a cheap tool that doesn't fall apart in a couple of weeks is a sign that you've been pretty lucky. Being reasonably durable has become a premium feature rather than a baseline expectation. We have already looked at the best rugged smartphones
and the most durable headphones currently for sale. Those are great options for durable gear that you might actually want to buy, but what about the absolute most durable consumer tech ever made?
By durable, we're not talking about the latest iteration of Gorilla Glass that can take a long drop, or still function after professional phone breaker JerryRigEverything subjects it to "the bend test". These are devices that will survive when most humans wouldn't: they've been hit with a brick, run over by a truck, and literally bombed, and they're still here with us. Can't say the same about you, can we? We can't guarantee that these are buy-it-for-life purchases, and some of them are not on sale anymore, but if they end up in the trash, it's probably not for their lack of endurance.
Read more: 7 Of The Most Useful USB Gadgets You Can Buy On Amazon
Apple Watch Ultra
Apple has been known for a lot of things, but never durability. Remember, this is the company behind the Bendgate and the Dustgate, which affected the iPhone and the MacBook respectively. When the company trundled out its new Apple Watch Ultra lineup with dramatic footage of the watch in extreme temperatures and deep water, you'd be forgiven for rolling your eyes. It looked like regular advertising with a dramatic flair. Surprisingly, the Apple Watch Ultra was exactly as resilient as it was made out to be, and possibly a little more.
The smartwatch has been put to the test by many, including YouTube channel AppleTrack. The video starts by trying to compare the Apple Watch Ultra to the Apple Watch Series 8 in terms of durability. What ensues is an exercise in futility, as the host tries to get the Apple Watch Ultra to break in any realistic scenario — and then in several unrealistic ones.
The second round of tests starts with the host, Sam, smacking the Series 8 against a wall, after which the watch immediately breaks. Meanwhile, the Apple Watch Ultra is completely unaffected. After 51 hits against parking barriers, concrete garden sculptures, and brick wall corners, Sam manages to break the screen, but the glass on top refuses to crack. The Apple Watch Ultra is quite expensive, coming in at $800, but if durability is important to you, you'll get your money's worth.
Casio G-Shock
Laying down the amount you'd spend on a flagship phone to get a smartwatch gives most people cold feet. The next best thing to an Apple Ultra Watch, and a much cheaper alternative, is the G-Shock, a "dumb" watch from Casio. G-Shocks are known across the world as some of the best rugged smartwatches worth your time, and they really deliver. In the aptly titled video "It Can't Be Beat!!" YouTube channel Thumb Studs puts the G-Shock through its paces. After failing to break it during normal tests, the host decides to throw a brick at the watch. The G-Shock survives unscathed; it's the brick that breaks, instead. Multiple times, in fact. This is only the first of many tests passed by the watch.
To be clear, the G-Shock isn't invincible. Nothing is. Things you would expect to break it, like pulling directly on the buckle, will succeed, and the surface glass scratches up pretty badly when rubbed with a rock for a few minutes. However, in realistic conditions, this watch is pretty much invincible. All those tests are not reflective of everyday life, so if you do buy a Casio G-Shock, you can rest assured that it will endure basically anything you can throw at it — including bricks.
Maglite Flashlights
Maglite Flashlights are a household name. They're tough yet bright, portable but not too small, and are seen in the hands of lots of professionals. You may have seen one of the company's most iconic commercials, during which a semi-truck runs over one of those flashlights. The driver gets out, picks it up, and turns it on like nothing ever happened. Like the Apple Watch Ultra, this may not be just advertising exaggeration. User testing suggests that surviving a semi-truck is only a Maglite's warmup routine.
This is demonstrated in a video by YouTube channel Maine Machinist, in which a Maglite flashlight is left in the snow overnight, freezes solid, and yet it immediately turns on when picked up. The light is then thrown against a wall, boiled in hot water for 30 seconds, and set on fire. While it doesn't quite look brand new by the end of it, the Maglite continues to work just fine. What does it take to kill this thing? What else is there to even try? According to YouTube channel NTX Outdoors, the answer is to shoot it with a small handgun. Then, after it survives multiple shots (are you even surprised it survived, at this point?), he pits it against a .45. ACP. The bullets do leave large dents, but not a single one is able to punch through the metal handle — even wicked revolver rounds like the .44 Magnum. If you ever get shot holding a Maglite, you can rest assure the flashlight won't die on you.
Nintendo Gameboy
In the last decade or two, Nintendo has lost most of the reputation it had for durability. Infamous controller issues have led many Switch owners to buy Nintendo Switch controllers that avoid Joy-Con drift. Back in the day of Nintendo's first handheld console, the Game Boy was a chunky piece of hard plastic designed with kid-grade durability in mind. You could say it was bomb-proof, literally.
According to Esquire, a bombing during the Gulf War turned a Game Boy into a blackened, half-melted lump; Something you might not be able to tell apart from the rest of the rubble. The owner, Stephen Scoggins, had higher hopes than we. He recovered the device and returned it to Nintendo, hoping there might be some way to bring it back to life. Subsequent testing revealed that, against all expectations, the core components were still working, even if the buttons were unusable and the screen was damaged. Rather than fixing it and return it, Nintendo gave Scoggins a new one and kept the damaged one for bragging rights.
At the time the Esquire article was written, the Game Boy was still on display at the Nintendo Store in New York, literal decades after its disfigurement. It was later removed in 2023 and returned to Nintendo of America's HQ in Redmond, Washington. If that isn't the epitome of "they don't make them like they used to," then we don't know what is. Shame that Nintendo won't follow its own example and make Joy-Cons hardy enough to avoid stick drift; It looks like the Nintendo Switch 2 might be just as susceptible to this issue as its predecessor.
Panasonic Toughbooks
We've seen watches, flashlights, and game consoles that can take a beating, but what about laptops? Surely, those tiny computers are too delicate for the task, with their large, thin screen and miniscule keyboards. That might be the case for most, but not for Panasonic. The Panasonic Toughbooks are rugged beasts designed for intense use cases that go beyond the couch or the coffee shop. They certainly look the part, but how do they hold up in real-world testing? Better than any laptop has a right to.
YouTube channel Diesel Laptops took the Panasonic CF31 on a trip to hell, and the Panasonic CF31 yawned and said, "Is that all?" Tests included pulling it with a chain behind a Ford F-150 and then running it over, dousing it with a bucket of water while in use, and setting it on fire. It survived, and still seemed to work fine. It was less successful against other tests, like throwing it in the air and then hitting it with a bat, but you probably won't be doing that with a laptop.
We at SlashGear have looked at some Panasonic laptops in the past, like the Panasonic Toughbook G2. While we didn't run them over with a truck, we found them to be quite durable. These are devices that can be dropped, drenched, and hit, and will continue functioning as if nothing ever happened. You'll have to be tough too, though, when you see those prices; Panasonic's line of hardy PCs can easily get up to $3,000.
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