www.nzherald.co.nz speed test — 20 Oct 2026
Measured from the wfix.shop server on 20 October 2026 at 13:34 UTC. Grade B (82/100), with the screenshots, the timings and the fixes that matter.
Where the first byte went
- DNS lookup 59 ms 18%
- TCP connect 27 ms 8%
- Server wait 235 ms 73%
Measured on the connection that fetched the HTML. Every other request on the page waits for the end of this bar before it can start.
How this page compares
Every report published here is in this comparison, so it is a reference population of pages tested from one server - not a benchmark of the whole web.
What these numbers mean
- The first byte arrived in 320 ms. That is workable, and the cheapest win left is caching or a warmer connection.
- The page transfers 1.51 MB over 26 request(s). Javascript files are 69% of it, so defer what is not needed for the first screen, and drop tags nobody uses.
- The HTML itself arrives gzip-compressed.
- It runs over HTTP/3, so the assets share a connection instead of opening one each.
- 29% of the weight comes from other hosts (analytics, fonts, embeds), which also means their slow day becomes your slow day.
- The largest element painted at 676 ms, inside the 2.5 s Google calls good.
- Layout stayed still (CLS 0.002), so nothing jumps under the reader's cursor.
- The main thread was blocked for 1.78 s, so taps and scrolling wait while scripts run.
Fix first: Compress text responses - Turn on brotli (preferred) or gzip for text/css, javascript and text/html in the web server. This is the cheapest win available on almost any site.
Read on one shared server, not a visitor's phone: use it to compare pages against each other, not as a promise about every connection. We fix what these tests find.
Browser render
The same URL loaded in a real browser, so these are the readings curl cannot produce. The grade above is still built from the server measurements.
Page weight by type
What the page is made of
Transfer size, compressed as sent. 26 request(s) in total, 1.51 MB across all of them.
Top issues
Compress text responses
high impact1 text response(s) of 10 KB or more are sent uncompressed, and the document itself is not compressed. That is 131.2 KB of compressible text.
Fix: Turn on brotli (preferred) or gzip for text/css, javascript and text/html in the web server. This is the cheapest win available on almost any site.
TLS certificate validity
high impactThe certificate for www.nzherald.co.nz has 20 day(s) left.
Fix: Renew automatically (certbot with a working renewal timer) and alert on the certificate, not on the renew command, so a silent failure is caught weeks before a browser warning.
Image delivery and format
medium impact0 image(s) over 200 KB and 1 large image(s) still served as JPEG or PNG.
Fix: Serve WebP or AVIF with a JPEG fallback, size images to the space they occupy, and lazy-load anything below the fold. Images are usually more than half of a slow page.
Total page weight
medium impactThe page transfers 1.51 MB across 26 request(s), with the document itself at 179.7 KB.
Fix: Work through the heaviest assets first: images, then fonts, then third-party scripts.
Cache static assets
medium impact1 asset(s) answer without a Cache-Control max-age, so browsers revalidate them on every visit.
Fix: Version filenames on change and serve them with a long max-age plus immutable. That is what makes a returning visitor fast.
Waterfall
Slowest requests
Each bar is one request's own response time, scaled to the slowest. Assets were fetched in parallel, so the bars overlap in real time rather than stacking. first party third party
| Request | Type | Status | Time | Size |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| https://www.nzherald.co.nz/resizer/v2/JK2R4SRPZJGPNAUITS6RCQ4CZI.JPG?auth=0e47bf94218eae57cabe6a7172ffb5419515eda8943db9f56208c31713aa92d2&width=296&height=197&quality=80&focal=3172%2C1749&smart=false | images | 200 | 1.67 s | 18.3 KB |
| https://www.nzherald.co.nz/resizer/v2/5JWYPUY455ATNMMMECYNRO6BGY.jpg?auth=cdf3a610b701807396b41fa01895db15cc0b956cac98d00dfe3d2d4426b17f33&width=296&height=197&quality=80&smart=true | images | 200 | 1.63 s | 13.7 KB |
| https://www.nzherald.co.nz/resizer/v2/AQZJKJBVTVCDXDOLOEXLRFGUME.jpg?auth=f733102729db3b5ab67d8572012e753616c390b36f1eee95c4e31df790b934bb&width=624&height=351&quality=80&focal=1116%2C2167&smart=false | images | 200 | 1.47 s | 28.1 KB |
| https://js.datadome.co/tags.js 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 1.09 s | 46.2 KB |
| https://media.nzherald.co.nz/logging/newrelic_log_config.js 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 1.09 s | 270 B |
| https://www.nzherald.co.nz/pf/resources/scripts/nzme.js?d=1073 | javascript | 200 | 1.06 s | 794 B |
| https://www.images-home.com/image.js 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 1.05 s | 227 B |
| https://try.abtasty.com/462b232fcb63ec2c862d2638cae0e436.js 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 1.05 s | 2.8 KB |
| https://www.nzherald.co.nz/pf/resources/images/placeholders/placeholder_p.png?d=1073 | images | 200 | 1.02 s | 59 B |
| https://securepubads.g.doubleclick.net/tag/js/gpt.js 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 1.01 s | 131.2 KB |
| https://www.nzherald.co.nz/pf/resources/logos/default.svg?d=1073 | images | 200 | 1.01 s | 4.9 KB |
| https://www.nzherald.co.nz/pf/resources/dist/scripts/lazyLoad.js?d=1073 | javascript | 200 | 1.01 s | 1.7 KB |
| https://www.nzherald.co.nz/pf/resources/images/brands/redesign/NZHPremium.svg?d=1073 | images | 200 | 1.01 s | 1.2 KB |
| https://www.nzherald.co.nz/pf/resources/images/brands/redesign/Listener.svg?d=1073 | images | 200 | 1.01 s | 1005 B |
| https://www.nzherald.co.nz/pf/resources/images/brands/redesign/OneRoof.svg?d=1073 | images | 200 | 1.01 s | 884 B |
| https://www.nzherald.co.nz/pf/resources/images/brands/redesign/Viva.svg?d=1073 | images | 200 | 1.01 s | 267 B |
| https://www.nzherald.co.nz/pf/resources/images/placeholders/placeholder_l.png?d=1073 | images | 200 | 1.01 s | 51 B |
| https://www.nzherald.co.nz/pf/dist/components/combinations/default.js?d=1073&mxId=00000000 | javascript | 200 | 1.01 s | 703.7 KB |
| https://www.nzherald.co.nz/pf/dist/engine/react.js?d=1073&mxId=00000000 | javascript | 200 | 1.01 s | 108.9 KB |
| https://cdn.sophi.io/assets/demeter/1/stable/3159192926.js?isConsented=true 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 1.01 s | 44.1 KB |
| https://www.nzherald.co.nz/pf/resources/scripts/utils/newrelic.js?d=1073 | javascript | 200 | 1.01 s | 26.0 KB |
| https://www.nzherald.co.nz/pf/resources/scripts/utils/local-storage.min.js?d=1073 | javascript | 200 | 1.01 s | 2.4 KB |
| https://www.nzherald.co.nz/pf/resources/scripts/utils/mini-jquery.js?d=1073 | javascript | 200 | 1.01 s | 2.0 KB |
| https://author-service-images-prod-us-east-1.publishing.aws.arc.pub/nzme/7G44NOPZXFDSNPYE6EN4FFNWPY.png 3rd party | images | 200 | 1.01 s | 169.4 KB |
| https://author-service-images-prod-us-east-1.publishing.aws.arc.pub/nzme/f4b85b72-2964-4cc9-8241-1680d17e7c49.JPG 3rd party | images | 200 | 1.01 s | 56.4 KB |
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