The brain is faster than the Chinese room, but other than that, yes, that's the so-called systems reply; Searle's response to it (have the person in the room memorize the instruction book) is beside the point, as you can teach people to perform all sorts of algorithms without them needing to understand the result.

As many people have pointed out, Searle's argument begs the question by tacitly assuming that if anything about the room understands Chinese, it can only be the person within it.