Do these high spec morons not realize the specs have to be balanced against battery life. The Steam Deck for example has a terrible battery life.

The Switch2 performance being discussed here should be based on performance when plugged in with no battery constraints, not portable.

Steam Deck can be portable and run at 15w TDP, in which case battery life would be extremely poor.

Why?  Isn't being portable one of the main points of the Switch?  I don't see Nintendo (or other developers) making games for the Switch that effectively require being docked.  Games will be developed based on battery and when dock there will be slight improvements, but nothing earth shattering.  

Hmmm, what can I say.
Did I disagree with anything you said in the past?

No.  I just didn't fully understand your position.  I was looking for clarification.

Portable mode will always dictate what can be done with any hardware, if battery life is accounted for.

But if Switch 2 is designed better than Switch, especially for better cooling while docked, they can allow for much better performance in docked mode than what they did with Switch - my memory is bit rusty, but IIRC official docked Switch clocks are something like 1020/768/1600MHz for CPU/GPU/Memory - yet overclocked Switch can run at much higher clocks for all 3, Nintendo just doesn't allow it.

If there is a fan in the dock then it would seem to me like they are planning to allow for full performance dock and worked backwards from there. A fan in the dock on top of a fan inside the system already is overkill unless you are planning to go full tilt on performance. 

There are workarounds to portable modes, even on the Switch 1 Nintendo allowed higher clocks for portable mode over time, and there's always a cheap way to add more performance portably. Add more battery, but batteries are dirt cheap components these days, a 4310 MaH battery is like $3 wholesale, probably less when you're ordering them in the millions. 

If the Joycons are indeed increasing in size for example they could introduce a larger battery in the Joycons which the base unit could siphon power from as one example of a way to increase battery life, another way would be to just have a portable performance mode and offer an official, slim Nintendo battery pack for those kinds of games. It could be very cheap. 

The dock having a fan certainly raises an eyebrow. 

The other thing with Switch 2 is the reports of magnetic attachments being common on the system, well I mean you know what would be a very useful and easy accessorie? A slim, small battery pack that just magnetically attaches to the back of the system for example. Super simple to attach and remove. That would cost pretty very little but allow for performance profiles in handheld/undocked mode to increase dramatically. 

Terrible battery life?

Steam Deck LCD 2 - 8 hours depending on the game/settings.

Steam Deck OLED 3 - 10 hours depending on the game/settings.

Much better battery life on average than my PSP, 3DS and Vita had. My first Switch also had a lot of games with only 3 hours battery life or less:

https://reviews2go.home.blog/2018/08/06/nintendo-switch-battery-life-chart-2/

Honestly I don't even know what kind of situation you would be in where you would play portably for more than 3 hours in one session on the regular while having no access to a power outlet. Pretty much all long haul plane and trains have power plug in.

Yeah, I've seen videos of overclocked Switch going to something like 2400 on Memory (OLED model) and 1500+ on GPU, with TotK running at 60fps.

So great cooling in dock might be just the right thing to let Switch 2 "go wild" when docked.