is it just me or does the game eat trough the battery like crazy when playing in handheld?

I’ve not timed it but it feels like it drains the battery faster than in example Splatoon, Mario Odessy, Doom or Skyrim.

Is it only a false perception or has anyone else noticed this?

To me it feels that it is more demanding than it should be in general. Even docked, my Switch lights on fire. About battery life, I have found it to last about 3.5 to 4 hours with flight mode enabled.

Yeah it feels like there are some optimization issues since I get stutters fromme time to time. 

I’ve never played my battery flat, but I go to about 40% in 1,5 hours in flight mode at about 20 % screen brightness. Compared to Splatoon it’s a faster battery drain (one should also consider that with Splatoon Wi-fi is on). 

EDIT:// the stutters does not hurt the game at all tho, after all it’s a turn based game. 

It does drain the battery a whole lot, a saw mine drop from 100 to 70% in about 40 minutes of play, before I turned flight mode on. The day after, it dropped from 100 to around 66% in about 1 hour or 1 hour 10 minutes or so, with flight mode on. To be fair though, I have barely used the handheld mode since I bought mine so I don't have very expansive data to compare against other titles or features, so I don't know what is considered normal.

It is actually doing a fair amount of effects, so I wouldn't say it is entirely unexpected.
Just keep the battery bank handy.

Yesterday I played for around two hours in docked mode. When I finished I realized that the console was burning hot. I never experienced this with Skyrim or Super Mario Odyssey despite I sometimes played those games for a longer time.

This is an UE4 game. Probably it has something to do with engine draining the battery a lot.

I get a little over 3 hours, slightly higher than BotW. Probably UE4, like others have said, but not draining faster than other Switch games. I think your mind is playing tricks on you.