Huh, right you are. I did a cursory search, but whatever I saw clearly was wrong.
That said, something is going on that I can't explain:
# Default settings for aws
$ time aws s3 cp /dev/shm/1GB.bin s3://test-kihaqtowex/a
upload: ../../dev/shm/1GB.bin to s3://test-kihaqtowex/a
real 0m10.312s
user 0m5.909s
sys 0m4.204s
$ aws configure set default.s3.max_concurrent_requests 4
$ time aws s3 cp /dev/shm/1GB.bin s3://test-kihaqtowex/b
upload: ../../dev/shm/1GB.bin to s3://test-kihaqtowex/b
real 0m26.732s
user 0m4.989s
sys 0m2.741s
$ time cp /dev/shm/1GB.bin s3fs_mount_-kihaqtowex/c
real 0m26.368s
user 0m0.006s
sys 0m0.699s
(I did multiple runs, though not hundreds so I can't say with certainty this would hold)
I swear the difference was worse in the past, so maybe things have improved. Still not worth the added slowness to me for my use cases.