TLDR Being a home console and being a handheld are orthogonal classifications , and many arguments seem to assume mutual exclusivity , I believe this is bad logic , you can argue whichever side you ' d like an that ' s ok with me , but I do take issue with treating orthogonal classifications as needing to be mutually exclusiveI think people are generally approaching this issue wrong , I ' d like to start by more clearly defining a handheldhome consoleHandheld Does it have the ability to be played for a meaningful amount of time away from an AC outlet i . e . Not just one of those features that gives you like 5 minutes of life to save your progress in the case of a power outage , or to withstand a brief one Can it be played without an exterior TVmonitor without being unbearably cumbersome ? If the answer is yes to both these questions , most people would likely say it is a handheldHome ConsoleCan it be played on a TVmonitor ? Now this is where it gets tricky , there ' s always been a pretty big no mans land in terms of power between console and handheld power , so there really isn ' t an obvious line here in terms of power , but even the Switch is clearly going to be on the console side of this no man ' s land as we know some of the games it ' s getting that it couldn ' t get if it were on the other side . So the question here is , is it on the console side of this no man ' s land ? This is really where argument for home consolehandheld debate should live , as it ' s the only subjective defining featureIf the answer is yes to both of these it would be considered a home console by mostNow these things needn ' t be mutually exclusive , let ' s just say for argument ' s sake , that we had a 3 DS that somehow had top end PC specs and screen that could display that and can be hooked into a TV , this would meet the defining features of both . I ' m not saying the Switch is this , but I ' m just establishing that these things needn ' t be mutually exclusive . So now , we know the Switch meets the qualifications for handhelds , so it counts as a handheld for sure . We know it can be played on a TV monitor , so now it all comes down to which side of the no man ' s land it ' s on in terms of power . Honestly , even being pessimistic about the power for the Switch , I think it ' s unrealistic to say it ' d be on the other end of that no man ' s land , there ' s no way it ' d be closer to 3 DS power than Wii U powerI see many people saying the Switch IS NOT a home console because it IS a handheld , which even without making any assumptions about power fuck , lets even say this could be down to NES level power , this is still just bad logic . That ' s like saying someone is not tall because they have black hair , arguing in favor in one should not be used to argue against the other , these classifications are entirely orthogonal . So I think it ' s unreasonable to say the Switch doesn ' t count as a home console without saying that it ' s power will be more comparable to handhelds than to home consoles