Benchmarking 5 React Table Optimisations: Only Two Actually Improved Speed

A developer tested five common optimisation techniques on a React table rendering 4,000 rows with a live filter, measuring re-render times on a production build. Using React.memo alone reduced render time by just 13ms — within measurement noise — because inline callback functions passed as props change reference on every render, defeating memo's shallow comparison. Combining memo with useCallback and useMemo cut the slowest keystroke re-render from 166ms to 47ms, making it the first genuinely effective fix. A children bailout approach clocked 0.4ms but only because it skipped the filtering work entirely, not because it processed data faster. Virtualisation, which renders only visible rows, reduced render time to 3.6ms while preserving full filter functionality, making it the most practical solution for large datasets.