By choosing React I'm optimizing for my time. I'll always add a framework that adds a tiny performance overhead if it means I can develop and maintain features easier.

That said -- performance characteristics like this are rarely interesting to me. The vast majority of "performance issues" I've encountered have to do with high-level architecture and/or network issues. I've never given up on a framework because it couldn't swap two DOM nodes fast enough.

I was surprised by the delay though, 500 ms for swapping nodes?

Popularity.

The ecosystem is bigger and there are more devs available.