Appium tests with UIAutomator is slow on screens with RecylerView

Appium execution was faster with Android 4.4. We are upgrading to android 8+ and noticed appium tests run significantly slower on screens with Recycler View.

Is there a way to speed up the test or should we switch to espresso.

If we switch to espresso would we need a major re-write of appium test code ?

This got resolved with waitForIdleTimeout set 0.