Does reusing symbols improve SVG performance?

Question

Assuming a relatively modern, SVG-supporting desktop browser and an SVG consisting of hundreds of similar, simple nodes:

1. The document could be set up as many i

Answer 1

I would advise you to not nest elements deeply. That is known to cause slowdowns in most browsers, see here and here.

In the general case though it should be fast, at least as long as the template itself isn't changed much (since if you do then each of the instances need to be updated too, and each of them can differ from the rest due to CSS inheritance).

Between