Everyone who is quasi-technical should be using uMatrix. I'm a privacy nut, but I don't think you even have to be much of one to appreciate the value that something like uMatrix provides.

On the other hand, everyone keeps saying that it speeds up their browsing experience, but anecdotally, I'm not sure I experience the same thing.

I do have a couple of other addons that are likely clouding this judgment. Not to mention my specific machine, network connection, sites I typically browse, etc, etc.

But is it possible that processing the requests for things to strip, and then updating uMatrix's UI elements is causing more overhead than just letting the assets load (which may even be cached)?

Not to mention that if I do encounter a broken site and I decide to try to make it work, I end up refreshing it 5 or so times before getting it minimally functional. The time spent doing that surely outweighs the time of just letting it load.

But I'm not saying to abandon uMatrix. Just that I use it for privacy, not performance or convenience.

Agreed, also I was surprised to see how much website still work while blocking all the third party scripts.