So if i would to agree with what your saying (and i do ) the mains socket picture offers no protection, so how can they sell this with a logo on the front saying "surge protector"
Try this one: We had a expensive multi-channel analyzer at work that kept blowing acquisition cards at like $1000 USD to repair every time. It was connected to a Scanning Electron Microscope which has high voltage supplies etc. We happened to have the schematics and I called the vendor and asked, how come there is zero surge suppression in the supply?
They told me that they specify 120 V, 60 Hz power. If it deviates, then your not supplying what the product calls for. A surge suppressor like I showed you solved the problem.
I had another issue with an X-Ray set with 100 kV supplies. It kept blowing RS-232 Driver chips. This problem, I took a different approach. I added RS-232 Isolation. Problem never occurred again and it's been 20 years.
Now, before I started working at the company, they had a electron beam evaporator with a 15 kV , 1 Amp supply in it. Every so often, probably yearly it would pop a transistor in the High Voltage regulator. I got tired of fixing it, so I attacked it. I found loose connections in the High Voltage divider and replaced a few parts like a 1 meg 200 W resistor. The problem never re-occurred.
One day, a monitor didn't work that was plugged into one of those fancy surge suppressors with a warranty didn't work. Examining the outside of the surge suppressor it was covered in black. The large expensive monitor was replaced under warranty.
In my early days of employment, we had a brand new expensive computer that just so happened to be plugged into an outlet with a bad ground and it fried. Had it been plugged into any sort of "surge suppressor", it may have survived.
Things were dying all over the new building and it was puzzeling. I discovered, not while the building was under warranty that there was a defect in some of the nearly five hundred 120 V outlets. One ground would lift when another plug was plugged into the outlet. That was a tough one.
Now, we had these aging computers (before the PC) dieing and they were REQUIRED for our daily operation. Since I was doing self-maintenance (troubleshoot to module level) I invested in to a power line conditioner and a surge suppressor. Eventually a Macintosh computer was plugged into the same system. it went 15 years before it was replaced and no issues but a floppy drive and dust. Not even a hard drive. The conditioning system was about $1000. It was designed to handle a brown-out.
I built an amplifier with 40,000 uf of capacitance in it. I had to put MOV's across the capacitors to prevent blowing a component.
What can kill electronics is sudden power fails and the reapplication of power causes surges.