Well I guess that depends on what you say is "competetion".

The only direct competitor I see the Swich having given the current market conditions are tablets, the 3DS and the Vita, and with respect I think Switch is more powerful than those in an effective sense. 

It's not competing with PS4/XB1. 

Nintendo is advertising it as a device that competes with Home consoles.
It has a dock to use it in a stationary position.
Ergo it can and should be compared to the Xbox One, Playstation 4 and PC.

The kind of hardware it has is irrellevent.
You can pick up a Voyo with a battery, mobile CPU, GPU, sans-screen and it's still a stationary device.

It's how Nintendo has portrayed the device that matters, as soon as they hooked it up to the TV via the Dock in it's reveal, it was competing for the same screen as Microsoft and Sony, ergo. It's competing with those platforms.

Slightly unrelated question; if Switch is downclocked to 30% of a Tegra X1 when portable, does that make it weaker or stronger than the 2014 Nvidia Shield portable with a fully clocked Tegra K1?

Is PS Vita TV a competitor to XB1/PS4?

I think you know this is bunk. 

Nintendo doesn't want to compete with XB1/PS4, it's plainly obvious. How much less similar to the PS4/XB1 could they have made this thing?

A $10 plastic dock and branding isn't going to change that. 

The main reason Nintendo wants to call it a console also likely had diddly squat to do with either Sony or MS. 

They want to be able to maintain $60 games, calling it a console at least gives them a pretense for doing that, they also want to avoid the whole "well I already have a tablet, I don't need a Nintendo tablet" conundrum by saying "no, you may have a tablet, but isn't a console".  Also they wanted to protect 3DS sales in the interim, which was a good call because the 3DS had a decent holiday season. There was no point in flushing those sales down the toilet for no good reason. 

There is no reason to buy a Switch for $250 over a $250 PS4 or XB1 if all you want is a home console, unless you are a hardcore Nintendo fanatic. And Nintendo doesn't care, they've ceded any illusion of direct competition, they know the portable aspect of the Switch is their saving grace. 

You are being an ignorant, the GC was a powerhouse for its age, way above ps2.

Weaker.
The Tegra X1 was roughly double the performance of the K1 in best case scenario's.

The Vita wasn't being advertised as Sony's main flagship platform.
Hence why your comparison is a silly one to make.

And despite not having traditional pixel shaders... Could still do every effect the original Xbox could with some clever use of the hardware.

I'm not sure about that Tegra K1 claim, I saw nothing on the Tegra K1 come close to Zelda: BoTW or Mario Kart 8 or Skyrim. 

Nintendo's flagship platform is a portable system. They aren't in the traditional console sphere any longer, they are not even trying to compete with Sony/MS. You know this is true, you just want to drag it out because they didn't make the system you wanted. 

To be honest if they had made the console that Nintendo fans thought was a good idea -- a 2.5 TFLOP Nintendo console ... they would be in big trouble right now and probably have to delay and go back the drawing board because why would anyone buy that over a PS4 Pro or Scorpio, both of which we didn't know were coming just a year ago. 

At least Switch always has the 3DS audience to fall back on. 

Ouch, so even as a portable, it's weaker than a one released three years earlier.

I feel pretty confident that the games you're going to be playing on a Switch are leagues beyond graphically anything on that Shield portable.

Don't buy all the hype with portable chip theoretically peak numbers either ... those numbers are possible but they are also misleading because mobile chips are throttled after like 10 minues of peak performance. 

As ass backwards as Nintendo, I don't think they would gimp the Nvidia chip more than they had to, the Tegra X1 is very powerful for a mobile chip, the reality is to likely push that cheap to peak performance for 3 straight hours likely caused large scale heat and battery issues so it had to be downclocked to where it is to even get 3 hours of battery life. 

The giant ass battery in that massive tray sized iPad Pro is rated at like 32 wH (watts per hour basically) ... that means if the system uses more than 10 watts per hour (including screen), you have less than 3 hours before that battery goes dead from a full charge. Now the Switch likely cannot have a battery that large, not in a casing that small. There's only so much you can do with 5-6 watts for a GPU. 

some people here are underestimate nintendo
they only need a new pokemon game for switch this holiday and they will sell like hot cakes
switch will be more successful then nintendo wii imo