Sam Hames

The Performance Inequality Gap, 2024 - Infrequently Noted

two sets of baseline numbers are presented for first-load under five seconds on 75th (P75) percentile devices and networks

Takes a look at the distribution of available end user computing devices and networks around the world, and uses that to provide a budget to achieve particular performance goals for 75% of users. The limits are quite low, even keeping in mind that the performance target of "first-load under 5 seconds" isn't a particularly ambitious goal.

The really interesting part is the analysis of javascript payloads compared to HTML/CSS: because javascript is more time and CPU intensive for the browser to process compared to plain old HTML, a javascript intensive site has half the budget of stuff it can send for the first load to reach first-load under 5 seconds.

Note that the budgets are higher than recommended in 2023 - devices and networks are improving.