Confirming the other comment - I've always found it to be much faster than the start menu, on every corporate issued ThinkPad I've used in the last year (3). Maybe something is weird on your machine.

Might want to reinstall. Mine was also sluggish on the first installation but afterwards run swimmingly

I find it to be much, much faster. Not sure what might be the difference between our experiences here. I basically dont open the windows menu bar anymore, especially since the powertoys run bar has a shutdown keyword too.