www.scmp.com speed test — 20 Oct 2026

Measured from the wfix.shop server on 20 October 2026 at 13:16 UTC. Grade C (70/100), with the screenshots, the timings and the fixes that matter.

https://www.scmp.com/

20 October 2026 at 13:16 UTC · Free test · report pt_b9218efbfa91

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Grade

70/100

Performance72/100

Structure67/100

9 audit(s) passed, 7 need work

First byte (TTFB)300 msmeasured from this server

Fully loaded1.42 sfirst byte + slowest asset

Requests26document + assets

Page weight23.09 MBcompressed transfer

HTML document110.1 KBbr

ProtocolHTTP/3cloudflare

Third-party22.98 MBother hosts

Where the first byte went

DNS lookup 70 ms 23%
TCP connect 58 ms 19%
Server wait 173 ms 58%

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

First bytefaster than 75% of 4,999 pages tested here300 ms against a median of 449 ms

Page weightheavier than 99% of 4,999 pages tested here23.09 MB against a median of 650.3 KB

Fully loadedfaster than 76% of 4,999 pages tested here1.42 s against a median of 1.84 s

Requestssends more requests than 100% of 4,999 pages tested here26 against a median of 26

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 300 ms. That is workable, and the cheapest win left is caching or a warmer connection.
The page transfers 23.09 MB over 26 request(s). Images files are 100% of it, so resize and recompress the largest images before anything else.
The HTML itself arrives br-compressed.
It runs over HTTP/3, so the assets share a connection instead of opening one each.
100% 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 748 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 1.84 s, so taps and scrolling wait while scripts run.

Fix first: Image delivery and format - 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.

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.

Screenshot

What the page looks like

Loaded in headless Chromium on this server. Click an image to open it full size.

Mobile screenshot of www.scmp.com — **Mobile** 390 × 844 · 186.2 KB · page is 6000 px tall

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.

Largest contentful paint748 msgood is under 2.5 s

Cumulative layout shift0.002under 0.1 is stable

Total blocking time1.84 slong tasks during load

First contentful paint544 msfirst content on screen

Browser page weight8.73 MB669 request(s), scripts included

Failed requests31blocked or unreachable

Largest contentful paint748 ms

Goodgood under 2.5 s, poor over 4 s

Cumulative layout shift0.002

Goodgood under 0.1, poor over 0.25

Total blocking time1.84 s

Poorgood under 200 ms, poor over 600 ms

Page weight by type

What the page is made of

Images 25 requests

22.98 MB 100%

Transfer size, compressed as sent. 26 request(s) in total, 23.09 MB across all of them.

Top issues

Image delivery and format

high impact

20 image(s) over 200 KB and 21 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.

Render-blocking resources

high impact

6 render-blocking resource(s) in the document head (0 script(s), 6 stylesheet(s)). The page cannot paint until each one arrives.

Fix: Add defer or async to scripts that do not change the first paint, inline the critical CSS, and load the rest with media="print" plus an onload swap.

Total page weight

high impact

The page transfers 23.09 MB across 26 request(s), with the document itself at 110.1 KB.

Fix: Work through the heaviest assets first: images, then fonts, then third-party scripts.

Third-party weight

medium impact

2 third-party host(s) serve 22.98 MB of this page. Each one is another DNS lookup, TLS handshake and point of failure you do not control.

Fix: Self-host the libraries you can, drop the tags you cannot justify, and preconnect the ones you keep.

HTML document size

medium impact

The document transfers 110.1 KB. A bloated document delays every other request, because nothing else can start until it is parsed.

Fix: Paginate long listings, move repeated markup into a template, and stop inlining large data URIs into the HTML.