The current version of firefox for android works very well and doesn't feel noticeably different from chrome on a several year old phone.
The newest version mentioned in this article actually feels faster than chrome although I'm not crazy about the new ui it is usable without difficultly and a work in progress.
Have you tried other browsers? I must say that the effect has gotten smaller since I got my second Android phone about a year ago (yes, the first lasted 2013-2018), I think because the webview component itself just got more bulky, but it's still very noticeable how slow Fennec is (Firefox from F-Droid) compared to a bare webview browser.
