The only feature of Switch that strikes me as gimmicky is HD Rumble.

With 3-D mode off I've been able to get 8 hours of battery life out of my 3DS XL. That's a pretty big difference over the 3-6 hours that the Switch has.

http://bgr.com/2017/02/28/nintendo-switch-battery-life-comparison/

If you follow the link you can see that the Switch dies pretty quickly even when not playing games. So that's basically 3 hour battery life while playing games vs 4-8 hours for the 3DS.

The "HD Rumble" is a completely extraneous and unnecessary feature to the controllers, that alone tacks on probably a good $50 to the system, easily. But portability, being able to take the system on the go, is not a "gimmick", as others have already said. It's an incredibly useful feature. The battery life should be better, yes, but being able to take the exact same game you were playing on your couch, and continue it on a road trip? That's a huge plus. And if Nintendo eventually does the smart thing, and puts ALL of their resources into Switch, and drops the 3DS support, bringing those games and development effort over to ONE unified platform, that would be even more convenient.

I don't disagree that the Gamepad was never used to all that great effect, and they easily could have had just a regular controller (though NOT that crappy Wii U Pro Controller design they came up with). But at the same time, the Gamepad was NOT the reason the system failed, at all, and it was neat/convenient having a touch screen/second screen there. Off-TV gameplay for most games was a huge plus. The reasons Nintendo failed with Wii U have very little to do with the admittedly too-big controller.

I don't think the original 3DS lasted quite that long. I switched it for an extended battery, but I might put my original back in just to test.

Either way, I think that as long as the battery is able to last through an average play session that it can be considered a portable. It's not like some of those gaming laptops that can't even last 30 minutes. Now those are really pushing the idea of portability, lol.

Yes, it is just a word. Words are used to express ideas or concepts. While words themselves don't really change, the ideas they represent do depending on the context, or simply just over the passage of time. The word "gimmick" used on gaming forums has primarily meant something along the lines of, "a feature that adds no useful functionality to a system's gaming capabilities, and which exists for the sole purpose of marketing or giving a console a unique appearance on the surface." It is absolutely used almost exclusively as an insult, and this isn't anything new. It's been consistently used this way for the past 10 years.

It's also pretty clear from his later posts that the OP means exactly that with his use of the word, so it looks like everyone is on the same page except you...

Here is a battery test with the original 3DS and PS Vita ( http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-12-20-vita-beats-3ds-in-battery-life-test ). 3DS died after about two and a half hours and the Vita died in about 3 hours and fourty minutes. Having owned both the systems (and pretty much all of the 3DS revisions minus the regular sized New 3DS and 2DS) as well as the Switch, I can say that the battery life is in range. Stand-by time for Switch in my experience is about the same as the Vita and much better than the 3DS (the Vita and Switch can last weeks in stand-by without needing to be rechardged; whereas the 3DS usually dies within 2-4 days), and operational usage is much better than both the Vita and original 3DS (although it dies somewhat more quickly than my New 3DS XL, although when playing New 3DS exlusive games that boost the New 3DS's processor I notice that battery life comes closer to the Switch although New 3DS XL still beats it by a half hour or so; I do not have the regular 3DS XL anymore to compare it to).

The link that you provided does not do much to backup your point as the Switch outlasted the 3DS, New 3DS, 2DS, PS Vita, many of the older iPads and iPods, DS Lite, GBA M, GBA SP despite having much more powerful hardware (not surprising of course considering the SOC in the Switch is built on a newer fabrication process) . The Switch is pretty much on-par with the other portables with regards to battery life, in fact, it beats many of them.

It would be more expensive, as the Switch in question would have a disc drive, as OP said. And on top of that, Nintendo would take it's margin on the Nvidia tech in Switch.

If by "same page" you mean becoming offended over a word that really isn't offensive then, trust me, I'm okay with not even being in the same chapter, much less on the same page.  Becoming all politically correct over a electronic device is just silly.  Businesses use gimmicks in marketing and advertising.  That's just the simple truth.

Wii u manufacturing cost is 228$ with gamepad and 148$ without it...
Wii u manufacturing cost must not have been reduced as it wasn't selling well to justify it, it might have even been increased in its last years due to components being more rare, so a price drop was never possible without bleeding a lot of money.

For 3DS it's 100$ with glasses-free 3D effect and 69$ without it...
Also Nintendo was paying royalties for 3D effect use, which must have been a very high sum, given that Nintendo was losing money when 3DS price had to fall from 249$ to 169$ and 3DS hardware became profitable with the release of 3DS XL at 199$...
Of course, since 3DS is a fairly big success, its manufacturing cost must have diminished significantly, plus that Nintendo must not be paying much after all these years for 3D effect use.
New 3ds was being sold at 99$ in the USA in Christmas, not at loss I guess! I was browsing Nintendo reports on their ir site and I found one regarding wii u, where it was being noted something ( about 3DS ) that implies that Nintendo isn't eager to take a loss on hardware again...
Wii u price wa never cutted but it lost money owing to excessive dead stock for two years... ( of white 8GB wii u, most people were buying the black 32gb version, that's why Nintendo ceased the production of the former in 2013 and the second got its price.)

It would probably cost $150 and nobody would buy it.

But being a hybrid console is.