The lifting can be heavy for mobile devices with slow CPUs and limited battery life unlike the servers running your site.

The reverse is also frequently true: if client rendering can improve cacheability or reduce the data going over the wire the radio savings will pay for a LOT of text updates. Similarly, if you can transfer a large listing without creating thousands of DOM nodes the results can be a wash depending on exactly how much data, the browser, etc.

There isn't a single right answer here - it really depends on the application and good analysis.