macro or plugin -- which one is faster?

[meine]

Hi,

Some tasks in vim are easily added with the use of a plugin, but you can
also make a custom macro to to the same job. Making a macro has the
advantage of better learning the workings of vim, and maybe not having
the other functions a plugin has that I don't use. My feeling is that I
make vim 'heavier' when having too much plugins, but I don't know if
that is true.

I'd like to hear your experience and opinions on this!

The background is that I would like to have an easy way to add an empty
line above or below a paragraph when editing a text. Using '<shift>-o' or
'o' for this requires extra steps for leaving insert mode and going back
to where I was. The plugin 'unimpaired.vim' just does the job with
'[<space>', but has so many other things that I really don't need...

[https://vimtricks.com/p/vimtrick-add-a-line-above-or-below]

TIA

//meine