Ah... No. Not that I called you an idiot but I must go with what the creators of the console call it rather than .. er.. you.

If you can be bother to listen to what Nintendo say , they clearly called it "a console that is also a portable". Listen to the adverts again.

Claiming an apology based on one game is a not really going to work either. I have no evidence but I can't help but think Zelda is a port from the WiiU, with much optimisation that needed to be done. I expect this to happen with game updates over the coming weeks.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe runs at 1080p@60fps in console mode with the GPU running at full speed. So does Splatoon 2 and pretty much every game built primarily for the console by Nintendo. What it performs best and fastest at is what it is, that's  why Nintendo calls it "a console that is also portable" and that works for me.

In console mode it is at full power. In handheld mode it is gimped. Simples.

This seems to be the case, unfortunately. 

Sounds like a bug more so than anything. It will be fixed soon enough. I will say that it just feels a lot better as a handheld than a console for me.

If horizon would have such framerate drops every review would score the game lower.

Measuring with  a double standard, really showcasing the biased factor when reviewing games.

Same goes with graphics if a game gets a 10 i expect state of the art current year graphics

A 10/10 means the game is top notch in every way zelda clearly is not.

Personally, I think many reviewers avoid giving Nintendo games anything less than an 9 because they know they will be hounded by the diehard fans.  Especially at launch when they know Nintendo NEEDS the Switch to be a success, fans are going to be out en masse trying to combat any negativity.  And while I don't really agree that graphical prowess neccessarily has to downgrade a game (it really should be based on the HW), frequent/random framerate drops and lag should 100% be something you dock a point or two for.  They aren't going to do it, though.

@ OP

I'm going to guess that a simple upclock in the Switch's chipset isn't quite enough to get a game like BOTW from 720p to 900p without the sacrifices.

Well it sounds like they just didn't spend the proper time optimizing for docked mode.
Which also tells us that doing that WILL require proper dev time and attention, not just a freebie.

Of course the context for this is the game is effectively launching across 3 specs,
2 of which are brand new launch platforms (Switch Dock/Portable) and the 3rd is Wii U,
now a last-gen platform which never sold well in the first place, so that's alot of platforms
which require their own performance tweaks, with very little install base between them all.
One does hope that Nintendo can patch the Dock performance issue to be equally smooth.

How are you all finding the size of the screen? I played some Zelda on a colleague's Switch today and it feels really small in portable mode.

I think that has to do with how mobile gaming has changed.  While the screen is large compared to past HHs, with so many people getting used to 7"-10" tablets, anything smaller seems like it should be a phone.  Which really makes me think, how much money could Nintendo have saved if they went with a more standard 7" screen?  They are widely available and probably much cheaper since they are the standard size.  Even if they added Gorrila Glass, I have to think it would at least come out in a wash.

They should patch that as an option, for those who don't care about resolutions.

Loads of people were saying that including myself. It's a mobile chipset there are no surprises here. Maybe some denial by die hard Nintendo fans previously but that was it.

Zelda issues maybe cpu related. In both portable and docked modes the cpu's run at the same speed 1020mhz but really in docked mode they should push them just a little higher to give docked mode a clear advantage. Maybe 1.2ghz. However there remains the issue that memory bandwidth is close between both  modes yet docked mode can drive the gpu at 2x the speed with a lot more data being moved. Nintendo could tweak the cpu speed but not create more memory bandwidth.

Before Switch portable mode was 3x Vita but now with the high performance mode 4x Vita which is probably what Zelda is using.  

As previously stated Switch is a very low performance home console that has only slightly more powerful than wii u however it does bring cpu performance in line with 360 and ps3 where as wii u was much weaker than those. 

Zelda isn't performing badly in docked mode because of poor programming its performing badly because that is its performance level. The game is pushing the hardware beyond its capacity at times.