Apple Pencil gets busted in bend test, but overall stands up pretty well

If consumer tech had feelings, each new unit would leave the factory with great trepidation, aware that they may be the unlucky one that ends up in the hands of some crazy dude desperate to subject it to a drop test, water test, bend test, or, most horrifically of all, a full-on all-out torture test.

If the Apple Pencil thought it could escape such treatment, it was sorely mistaken. Within days of hitting the market alongside the iPad Pro, one unlucky unit was picked up by video blogger Zach Straley, who, after lulling the Pencil into a false sense of security with a kindhearted – some might even say affectionate – unboxing sequence, proceeded to tear into the tool as if it’d just called him a bumbling nincompoop in front of his friends and family.

The thing with the Apple Pencil is that charging it requires you to stick it in the Pro’s Lightning connector, leaving it looking a bit like an iPad-flavored lollipop. Sticking straight out like that, the Pencil is of course more susceptible to inadvertent knocks, yanks, and twists, all of which would place great pressure on both the Pencil and the port.

In his video, Straley wanted to see how much of a beating the Apple Pencil can take while it’s connected to the Pro, and spends more than two minutes enthusiastically bending it in all directions to see how it fares.

Fighting for its dear life, the put-upon Pencil holds up remarkably well for the most part before Straley ramps things up a notch.

“I can definitely hear it breaking,” he says at one point while pulling the stylus sharply to one side.

And then, with a forceful yank that no piece of kit would be able to take, the Pencil breaks apart at the end where it’s joined to the tablet. And yes, it’s messy.

On discovering that the Pencil still worked, Straley does his best to finish it off completely by attempting to snap it in two with his bare hands. But the Apple Pencil has the last laugh by staying intact.

The state of the Pro’s Lightning connecter wasn’t reported.