If he is breaking Sansa's he won't do well with an iPod. Plenty of family members/friends have had both and the Queens Of Destruction (my sisters) all have Sansas and haven't broken them.
I tend to avoid companies that have things fail on me as well, even if I know it was my fault or that it was just bad luck
I'm not sure of the current generation iPod's durability, but I remember Wired magazine (a couple years ago I think) reported that the average iPod user returned/RMAed his or her iPod 1.1 times