[dliff]

RN definitely feels native... assuming the developers utilized the built-in components properly. RN is an actual native component whose state is backed by a JS bridge.

There certainly are poorly written / optimized RN apps. There are also apps that due to their nature/goal shouldn't be RN even at an early stage. (Startup, navigation, threading, network issues for one). However, I would argue that a properly written RN app, within the confines of the problem RN attempts to solve, does not feel heavy and is actually indistinguishable from native.

From my experience I would surmise a lot of badly performing RN apps stem from poorly written JavaScript, especially bad state management (lots of devs who perhaps have only written web JS in the past?).

[monocularvision]

Except for navigation

[dliff]

Curious where this is an issue. React Navigation feels and is, according to their documentation, composed of native components.

Vs. what you can do natively it has severe limitations and the documentation isn't the best (though I think it has improved recently).. but feels native to me.