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What should I be using instead?

I don’t mind cmd.exe and it launches instantly (same reason I frequently use notepad.exe for quick edits). That latter quality is very hard to find :)

Edit: but if you meant for scripting, yeah, batch files are terrible.

On my Windows 10 with no profile it takes 1-2 seconds (Ryzen 3600/M2/32GB RM). Like, what is it doing? I get annoyed if bash on Linux takes like 250ms.

Opening cmd.exe or PowerShell (or something else)?

PowerShell

Personally I use the bash that comes with git for Windows. I only need to use cmd.exe for creating symlinks since mklink is a built-in.

It's installed everywhere on any version of windows and works fine for interactive tasks (personally I wouldn't write anything but the simplest scripts for it, anything with for loops is a big no-no)

Powershell is installed everywhere on any version of Windows that still receives security updates.

I do. I don't like PowerShell (and it took me years to realize it wasn't a diagnostic tool for power management), and I find bash for Windows to be ill fitting. I don't do a lot of stuff in the command line on Windows, so working like it has for decades is a plus.