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Sometimes i'd rather buy a snes or sega mega drive game because of the console's robustness.
I used to like consoles because they work differently from a PC. For example, you can remove the electrical energy mid-game and the console still works fine next time you turn on. A PC would have it's memory damaged if that happened.
But... Consoles works like PCs nowadays, so hurrah for the older ones.
Older game consoles were pretty robust. Nintendo made some pretty good hardware. You had to go out of your way to really damage it. Though the Switch dock feels like flimsy plastic, well it is. The Switch itself, isn't too bad.
Older consoles do need maintenance though.
Eg: quite a few really old systems need caps replaced.
Systems with optical drives can have dead laser lens and/or spindle too.
Some other possible issues too, like CPU/PPU failure.
Something else that can happen is inept people trying to run Japanese consoles off the wrong PSU and damaging consoles.
And then the old Famicom/SFC consoles can get terrible yellowing of plastic shell. Can be restored, but with famicom you need to sacrifice the stickers to restore the colour properly.
I need to find that youtube video of a Switch unboxing where everything fails. Joycons fall off, thing won't fit in the dock etc. Frickin hilarious.