Faster and better, but in all its time, it's never gotten better than Alfred which, ironically, depends on the Spotlight index.

Many people are experiencing the opposite.

I was hopeful that they'd finally give us something to make Alfred unnecessary but it's still slow as shit, so I'm still using Alfred.

I essentially use it as an app switcher. Sometimes I'm jumping between 6 different apps across multiple monitors and multiple workspaces on each and it's faster do type the first couple letters of the app I want and hit return than to Cmd+Tab, parse the icons in their unpredictable order (made harder by all icons being squircles now), and tab to which one I want.

But native spotlight is too slow and unpredictable.

Seems worse and slower for me. YMMV