It depends on the workload. With insufficent memory and/or latency, ZFS can perform orders of magnitude worse than ext4/xfs, even when tuned. (I speak from expe

It depends on the workload. With insufficent memory and/or latency, ZFS can perform orders of magnitude worse than ext4/xfs, even when tuned. (I speak from experience) Not exactly the same, but did you ever try ZFS on a commodity USB stick? It can get really bad when circumstances are not in favor. With not too much concurrency it can perform quite well even under constraints, though!