So do you have the new version now with the Vega II? That's currently what I am using. To me it's about as laggy as the 16" MBP when I use it with either the LG 5K or the XDR. So that part is a wash and I'm just dealing with it.
OK, I'm not. I tested ON1 and stay away. Clunky and slower than Lightroom. Tried Affinity Photo and the UI is pretty but way too limited in functionality and slow as well, at least for a lot of the tasks I do frequently. I'm now trying out Capture One. Massive learning curve but....the UI is super snappy. I need to learn a lot more to determine if it can replace Lightroom for me; my most important plugin works and I suspect everything else I really need to do will work for me as well.
I just did a few quick tests to compare some common tasks for me in Capture 1 and Lightroom. Importing 31 ARW files and generating 1:1 previews from my Sony A7R IV takes Capture 1 21.6 seconds; it takes Lightroom 45.7 seconds for the same batch. Round one, C1. Exporting the same 31 images to 2048-pixel (long edge) jpegs, C1 takes 11.1 seconds and Lightroom takes 8.1 seconds; Lightroom wins round two although the total time difference is pretty small. One task I do regularly is export images to HeliconFocus for focus stacking. It exports 16-bit TIFF files from both C1 and Lightroom. Here there is a big difference: From C1 it takes 87.9 seconds where as LR does the same files in 30.8 seconds; Lightroom wins round three. In defense of C1, they just recently started allowing plugins so it's possible the speed issue is with the plugin and not with C1. To test this, I tried a straight export to TIFF on both apps; C1 took 24.0 seconds and Lightroom took 30.9 seconds, so it appears that the plugin or the way C1 is handling plugin exports is at fault here. Regardless it's a slowdown in my workflow unless it's addressed.
As for browsing the same set of 31 raw files, the difference is like night and day. C1 just flies along, no problems at all. Zooming is instantaneous; even with 1:1 previews Lightroom hesitates. Spot healing--which I do a great deal of in my daily workflow--major advantage to C1. It's lightning fast, whereas Lightroom tends to bog down when you clone more than a few dust spots out, or mix dust spot cloning with things like lens corrections.
Interestingly enough, C1 also supports dual GPUs...and LR does not. Lots to think about here.
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As for the XDR I really love it. I got the nano version; I just don't like glossy screens. I know the regular XDR isn't really as glossy as the MBP's and the iMacs but...I prefer matte and no reflections. I want it to look like it will look in a print, and I never get glossy prints either. It's glorious being able to see things up close and edit the fine details in context without scrolling all around.
It does tax Lightroom even more though. It's just quite frankly a very poorly-coded application and they need to spend some serious time fixing it. Based on my limited tests today I am 90% sure I'm going to switch to C1, after over ten years of using LR. I'm going to see how it goes over the next week and meanwhile reach out to the HeliconFocus developer about the speed of the exports; they're really responsive and if they can speed that up it would be awesome. That app was just upgraded to use the AVX-512 instructions and it also leverages the GPU. Stacking huge numbers of images on the Mac Pro is now a dream, super fast. If more developers used the power we have at hand it would be great. Adobe has the money to do so...they clearly just feel like it's not worth their time.
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