Nintendo

That does bring up the question of if the Steam Deck counts as a handheld console or not. Going off the wikipedia descriptions of game consoles and handheld consoles, I think it probably counts.

The most powerful portable console ever

Yea because no one besides nintendo makes any portable consoles anymore. That’s like Apple saying "It’s the best iPhone we ever made", every time they introduce a new one…

And it’s not even necessarily true, if you count the steamdeck as a console, which one might.

And still, the hardware of the switch was already obsolete when it launched. The Tegra X1‘s only redeeming quality is a comparatively high graphics performance compared to most off the shelf mobile SoC, but even it is slow compared to an iPhone 11 or heck a 250€ tablet with a Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 blows the switch out of the water, performance wise. You’ll even get more memory, more storage, etc.

That isn’t to say, the switch is bad. The performance is adequate for the typical Nintendo games but you can’t tell me the recent pokemon games or Zelda TodK run great, barely hitting 30fps. Which is not surprising, considering most midrange mobile phones are quicker by now and the switch is stuck with a graphics chip that most closely compares to a GTX 830M. A 5 generations and 10 years old graphics chip that wasn’t even fast when it was new.

And back to the steamdeck again: while it is a bit more expensive than a switch, it’s still a damn good deal, especially on the used market and even able to emulate switch games with better performance than the switch itself. And, unlike the switch, it is actually able to play modern games fairly well, while the switch either runs them at subpar quality or only via streaming.