The "spinning hard drive" is the weak point of all iPod's that have hard drives. They are delicate, especially for a device that is often in motion during use. The current iPods (such as iPod touch) all use flash-based storage, which is solid state (no moving parts) and far more sturdy. When buying a used iPod classic, you can't assess the condition of the iPod's hard drive (unless you find one that is described as "unopened"). I can't predict what Apple will do going forward, but all of my much older iPods (going back to 3rd gen iPod from 2003) work fine with the latest iTunes and OS X; obviously, getting the current iPod touch is the safer move, in terms of long-term compatibility.
Another key consideration is the amount of space available for storing music. One is 128GB and the other is 160GB, but the comparison is more complex. iPod touch (which is an iOS device like iPhone and iPad) does a lot more than iPod classic. Some of its storage space will probably get used to store downloaded apps, and iOS itself takes up a few GBs. So, the amount that is available for music may be significantly less than 128GB. With an iPod classic, unless the user puts videos on it, most of its space will be used for storing music.
iPod touch is far more functional, but if he already has an iPhone (or other smartphone), the additional functionality may be duplicated. As a pure audio player that sounds good and is easy to control, you can't beat a "traditional" iPod with large storage capacity and click-wheel interface.
If his broken iPod classic is broken because of a faulty hard drive (but otherwise in good shape), you may want to tell him about replacing the hard drive with a compact flash card or SD card (different types of common flash cards) on an adapter. I don't have an iPod classic, but I've done this type of repair and upgrade on my older "classic" iPods. I've seen 128GB SD cards for less than $50 recently, and they can go higher in capacity (more than 160GB). This web site has interesting info, for 5th gen "classic" iPod and later
https://www.iflash.xyz/
