The thing is though, in portable mode the smaller screen means you can get away with a lot of cuts to make up the difference. Lower screen resolutions, ambient occlusion off, lower res shadows, dialled down draw distance, etc. On a 6 inch screen cutbacks like this aren't as noticeable as they would be on a HDTV.

I haven't actually tried those two games on my Ryzen 2700U notebook.

But Overwatch, Battlefield 1, Call of Duty: WW2 were hitting 1080P native... Which is certainly a step up over what my base Xbox One machine can do... Or I can dial back the resolution to 75% scale (Which fits the bandwidth better) and dial up some of the effects.

The thing with Ryzen notebooks is that Ryzen has a configurable TDP and some notebook manufacturers limit it to 15w instead of 25w.
Some notebooks also only come with single channel DDR4...
And some notebooks (like mine) actually allow the DDR4 to run at 2666mhz rather than 2400mhz.
And some notebooks aren't limited to 12 month old driver sets. (I hacked mine.)

"Look better" is a subjective approach... I rather take a methodical one.

Doom on Switch is using techniques that Halo 4 doesn't such as GPU accelerated particle effects, it's rendering is a step up over Halo 4's baked approach and it shows.
From a graphics perspective, Doom on Switch beats Halo 4 on 360 in terms of fidelity. - Artistic style, Halo 4 probably wins.

Indeed, the Xbox One is GPU limited.

But games that are CPU bound will occasionally pull ahead. (Assassins Creed at one point.)
The difference between the Xbox One and Playstation 4's CPU's are pretty inconsequential. I.E. 1.6ghz vs 1.75ghz. - 150Mhz is stuff all either way you cut the cake.

The Xbox One does have the DDR3 and eSRAM advantage which reduces latencies as well, which gives it a little extra kick in the CPU department.

However, the Xbox One on the GPU side is partly hampered by the lack of bandwidth... Even the PC's Radeon 7750 saw large reductions in performance moving from GDDR5 to DDR3. - The Xbox ONE's GPU is a step up over that and it has to share it's limited bandwidth with the CPU and other components as well, compounding the issue... Granted it's mitigated somewhat by the use of a 256bit bus and eSRAM, but not resolved entirely.

The ROP/CU/TMU reductions doesn't help matters either of course.

Well. There are better ways to go about resolving pop-in, such as fading. But I digress, that is another discussion entirely that could take me many hours to elaborate upon. :P

I haven't actually tried those two games on my Ryzen 2700U notebook.

But Overwatch, Battlefield 1, Call of Duty: WW2 were hitting 1080P native... Which is certainly a step up over what my base Xbox One machine can do... Or I can dial back the resolution to 75% scale (Which fits the bandwidth better) and dial up some of the effects.

The thing with Ryzen notebooks is that Ryzen has a configurable TDP and some notebook manufacturers limit it to 15w instead of 25w.
Some notebooks also only come with single channel DDR4...
And some notebooks (like mine) actually allow the DDR4 to run at 2666mhz rather than 2400mhz.

And some notebooks aren't limited to 12 month old driver sets. (I hacked mine.)

I'm not really sure what your point is. I mean even if these current consoles aren't incredibly powerful they're still very capable, I'd argue they're aging better than last gen consoles.

I mean what if 8th gen consoles had double the CPU power, 16GB of RAM and a GPU with 3-4 TF at launch? Would gaming right now be much more enjoyable? I think it would be pretty much the same just with better performance and graphics. Compared to last gen developers got a huge spec boost for the 8th gen but the games are basically the same with better graphics in my opinion.

However, I do like the spec boost of the X1X simply because its making modern console games more visually appealing.

Yeah, they do get away with lower res (though it's the same viewing angle with 6" tablet that is some 40 cm from your eyes or 60" TV that is 4m away), but you can clearly see all other cutbacks. Not that it matters much, cause that's the base performance devs have to deal with on Switch, since all games need to support it.

Some games are problematic on my Raven Ridge 2700U notebook. I hope that gaming performance gets a lot more stable when I can finally update the GPU driver from 2017 to 2019 in a few months. But I don't expect Xbox One performance.

You don't think the scale increased? That's the one big difference I noticed from last gen is how much bigger the average levels/worlds in all the games are. That and how they stuff them full of more more items/objects/animations/clutter.

Even linear games/franchises seem to have gone semi if not fully open-world.

I think there are exceptions, I can point to games that I feel are using the increased power for more enemies on screen, player counts and other aspects that truly affect gameplay.

Generally speaking though, the average game is feels like last gen but with more refined/modern game mechanics and improved visuals. As I staed before when developers get superior specs there is a tendency to use resources less efficiently as well.

Nintendo seems to do magic with inferior specs but they're just being efficient with limited power. Kinda like how developers used to approach 7th gen hardware.

What do you mean for "average Game" ?  

 What I noticed going from 7th Gen to 8th Gen is an increase in scale, more draw distance, far more geometry, better textures, lighting, IQ, everything, physics/animations, effects, in those games where developers have put some serious effort; and I think you cannot expect more than this.

 Killzone Shadow Fall, even though it was not the game I was expecting, showed immediately a big jump in scale, in the graphics department, effects, IQ.  Not a game changer of course, as it was just a Launch title.  But what about Uncharted4 and God of War ? Talking about the latter, it completely blows me away, on PRO even more.

 Then we have many other games that don't show much of an improvement over last gen, apart from prettier graphics and more modern mechanics, but this happens on any system of any gen, looks like you discovered the warm water...

 How many remakes, rehash of games we have already seen millions of time from Nintendo, which plays and feels like Nintendo64 games with just a graphics and little "mechanics" update ?? But still, we have other very good games like Super Mario Odyssey and Zelda which showed much more than just an increase of numbers of enemies, graphics and prettier textures.   This concerns every hardware of any generation compared to any other hardware of the previous generation, and don't expect the "Next Gen Factor" on average games, where for a reason or another, devs didn't put enough effort because of lack of resources/time/talent/etc.

""Nintendo seems to do magic with inferior specs but they're just being efficient with limited power. Kinda like how developers used to approach 7th gen hardware.""

Nintendo is not the only one able to do "magic" with its own hardware, just they have less resources to work with.  GOW and Forza Motosport4 say HI :)

I just think the biggest changes have been in graphics while game design has hit a walt