In terms of the most balanced in speed, consistency in page rendering and good default settings, is there a clear winner?
Personally I've been using both Dark Reader and Midnight Lizard on different devices and I can't say I noticed much of a difference in terms of performance, what I did notice is that Dark Reader seems to have better defaults, but many complain that it slows down page loading a ton, I haven't heard the same about Midnight Lizard, but maybe that is by virtue that it has way way fewer installations and therefore fewer people talking about it.
Do you know if I've missed one and there is a totally different extension that does even better than both?
Try Samsung Browser. It has a fantastic built in dark mode. I use it even on my non Samsung devices.
If it is based in Chrome and used the flags to achieve it I think newer versions won’t ship it… unless they have their own method… (I think Cromite or Vivaldi has it), does Samsung browser have a desktop client? That would be a must to me too.
It is based on Chromium, but its dark mode is different. And better.
No desktop client though.