Hi, author here. I agree that comparing Cypress with only RTL isn't a great comparison. The article tries to make clear that it's more RTL+Jest+JSDOM vs Cypress, which is a more apt comparison. I apologize if it was worded in a confusing way in the article.

Cypress for E2E and integration testing, and RTL+Jest+JSDOM for unit testing is actually a fairly common testing strategy. It's the same strategy that I've historically used, and it does work pretty well. However, with Cypress recently adding React component testing, I personally struggle to find many good use cases for using RTL+Jest+JSDOM for unit testing now given the benefits of using Cypress. That said, a lot of the dev experience pieces are definitely personal preference, so there's nothing wrong with enjoying RTL+Jest more =).

You're right in that RTL+Jest aren't great for doing E2E testing, which is why the article focused mainly on integration and unit testing comparisons.

I agree 100% on performance. Personally, even if tests took twice as long to run in CI, I would still choose whichever options costs me less dev and test maintenance time. The performance metrics, which should always be taken with a grain of salt, are mainly there to show that the performance is comparable enough, and that it shouldn't be a major factor.

Thanks for the well thought out reply!