First timer to emacs, struggling with pdf-tools

Hi all,

I am trying to establish a LaTeX workflow, and ideally would like to use pdf-tools (or something similar) because well, everything works that way all within emacs. However, the rendered pdf doesn't feel quite snappy and fast as a standard pdf viewer like Zathura or even firefox's pdf viewer.

Is this a known issue with pdf-tools, or is there something that I would have to change in the config to make it work seamlessly with emacs and auctex?