As has been mentioned a few times now, Nanite is not aiming to be more performant than a game that’s been well optimized.
It’s not trying to perform better than LODs or manual optimization. It’s trying to make a new system of rendering in which engineers and artists workflows are not bogged down by hours and hours of optimization work. If you have 15 artists who make one mesh each per day, and then spend the next day optimizing them for performance, then Nanite will save you 150+ artist working days every single month.
It doesn’t need to run better than LOD’s and a well optimized game to reach that goal, it just needs to be able to render thousands of instances of different unmerged, LODless meshes and materials at a playable framerate.
This thread is the equivalent of being upset because transferring liquids by pumps and pipes cause more spillage than transferring it manually with a bucket. You’re free to do it with a bucket if that’s feasible and what best suits your needs, but sometimes the task is so big that it’s worth the spillage to do it the automated way.