Most likely down to TPM yeah, I turn off "fast boot" anyways so naturally have a slower boot time by a few seconds. I'm not desperate enough to browse my e-mails that it even bothers me though. Might be Windows 11 has more junk running on a normal boot FASTBOOT than Windows 10 also slowing it.
What important is that Windows 11 run fast. Not the boot time, because it can boot slow and show fast boot (in Task Manager).
We are looking at the boot time as a kind of benchmark score, not really very important in itself (as you very correctly pointed out) but as an indicator of overall performance. I do video encoding sometimes, and one of my projects ran for a whopping 22 hours. If Windows 11 can let me do it faster, I'll be very interested in switching to it, the rotten GUI notwithstanding.
I could not possibly care less about boot time. The extra time spent on extra clicks accessing the real context menu, real start menu and dealing with the mess that is forced grouped tasks on the other hand adds up to a lot of time and frustration very quickly. Once trimmed down I really like Windows 10 and Windows 11 doesn't offer me anything I actually need so for now I'm good sticking with Windows 10. Who knows, maybe by the end of Windows 10 support they will have changed Windows 11 such that certain forced GUI elements will become optional. I'll likely put Windows 11 on media and gaming PCs once Intel Gen 12/13/Zen 4 parts are out but for production stuff, Windows 11 has been far too infuriating to daily drive.
It's not that fast "yet". Win10 19044 blows this outta the water for responsiveness and speed, only time will make Win11 the same.
I tested build 22000.194 in a old desktop with Dual core, 4 Gig of ram, on board intel graphics, wd black hdd no tpm, no secure boot. Cold Boot time is appx 50 sec. Fastboot is 18 sec. Installed startisback. Removed most of the bloat. Old drivers still work without issue. System and win 32 programs run fast. XAML based apps run like s**t as usual.
Its certainly looking more and more like it. As I stated before, there is no real point worrying about what is the FINAL build or RTM. Be it 22000.1, 22000.9, 22000.132 or 22000.194. Regardless what you have, how you got it, it will be immediately upgraded to its seems the latest (possible 22000.252). Heck, even if there was an ISO for 22000.252 (be it UPP dump, or official M$ ISO), makes no difference, that too will be updated fairly quickly to a new build number. My advice to most, just be happy with the ISO you have, its just the "JUMPING OFF POINT" to get you to the current version.