Comment by Macha
They have quality issues with stick drift, and the "single joycon as controller" setup is clearly designed for child-sized hands, but it's definitely an advantage to be able to play the system handheld but also have minimal extra to pack (just the rails widget) if I want to put it on a train table on the kickstand and the use the controllers more ergonomically.
And I mean, if you have kids, being able to double your controllers when they have friends around is also helpful to avoid arguments.
I was traveling through Asia with the original Switch and got a cute girl who didn't speak English to play Mario Kart with me on the ferry.
The detachable controllers were pretty magical, modulo the reliability problems.