Top lane braum, any input?

It works well in niche situations. It's difficult to win lane as Braum, but not impossible. For example, his kit makes him really well suited for assisting and surviving ganks. If you max his Q first, and rush something with mana like a upgrade, he's pretty much set in terms of both poke and ranged farm. W'ing to minions suddenly becomes one of the world's most useful tools to him as well.

The biggest problem is how you want to build Braum. See, Braum's greatest and most defining asset in my mind is his Unbreakable, making him less of a front liner and more of a dedicated peeler. To maximize on that, you generally want to build a lot of utility. Building a lot of utility however, you end up just having a lot of extra gold from being a solo laner being put to waste by the end game, and makes you as a solo later fall off harder than ever. This is no problem if you are protecting a dedicated hyper carry, but it makes solo q top lane Braum way iffier than need be. If you wanted him for his stun, there are a number of champions with easier to apply and sometimes longer lasting stuns. If you wanted him for his huge AOE CC, there's a gigantic list of AOE CC champs. The only reason you want Braum over anyone else is his shield's utility and his shield just does not take advantage of being a solo laner very well.

He is incredibly item dependent, but if he gets those items when he needs them he can be very difficult to deal with. You typically want attack speed items like Wits End and BotRK to boost your passive, but after that you can go a fighter path or a tank path. Tank has more utility for your team, however if your opponents are showing they are fairly bad you can go super fighter carry Braum and wreck people.

It was alright when braum had higher base damage on his passive and q but his damage is too low now however and he isn't durable enough early in the game against most generic top laners.

You'd pressure people with aa + Q for an auto reset and aa and hope to stun them in your minion wave but with the less damaging skills its not as cheesy anymore

I don't think he has the damage to do a solo lane.