Tor is free with no signup / cc required. This makes a huge difference, especially for younger users. Did for me back then, at least.

Initially it was slow, yes. But totally fine the last few years for normal browsing and reasonable downloads. Speedtest.net, speedtest.googlefiber & fast.com just now gave me 5, 6 & 10Mbps for whatever server in Ghana i got. Only the high ping causes loading times to still be a bit annoying.

But right now the biggest reason not to use Tor for anything "legit" is the many services blocking you, since indeed most current Tor users are not what those services want and the race to the bottom of Tor will continue, if we haven't reached it already.