[qwery]

I'm not seeing such a difference, but it is there. I'd be surprised if it was as high as 100ms. Obviously different computer environments[0] will have an impact here.

I would be much less likely to notice it as "slow" if it didn't show me a spinny-spin. It's advertising that it's slow!

I agree that the click-to-playback lag time would have such an effect, but how significant it would be is unclear. It would take an entity the size of, say, Youtube, to begin to measure this sufficiently.

[0] Firefox, 2(?) year old laptop, i7-1185G7, windows 11, updating Edge (in 32-bit mode) 24/7, haven't rebooted for a few weeks

[divbzero]

Same here: While the difference in speed is noticeable, I would be surprised if it’s much more than 100ms on this specific machine (Safari, 1 year old laptop, Apple M2, macOS Sonoma).