Deciding between HttpClient and WebClient

Question

Our web app is running in .Net Framework 4.0. The UI calls controller methods through ajax calls.

We need to consume REST service from our vendor. I am evaluating

Answer 1

Unpopular opinion from 2020:

When it comes to ASP.NET apps I still prefer WebClient over HttpClient because:

1. The modern implementation comes with async/awaitable task-based methods
2. Has smaller memory footprint and 2x-5x faster (other answers already mention that)
3. It's suggested to "reuse a single instance of HttpClient for the lifetime of your application". But ASP.NET has no "lifetime of application", only lifetime of a request.