The sweetspotted front hit of down smash deals less knockback scaling with its base knockback not fully compensated, weakening it overall (50 base/90 scaling → 56/82).
The sweetspotted front hit of down smash deals noticeably less base knockback, but has more knockback scaling (56 base/82 scaling → 37/93), causing it to KO later near edges and from center stage.
However, this allows it to KO slightly earlier from across the stage.