Does Chrome's reduce data make browser faster? I was wondering if using "reduce data"-function under bandwidth management would make the browser load pages faster on slow connection like mine ~512kbit. I have unlimited data so the pure amount of data doesn't matter. I just wonder if it makes loading pages faster.
It depends on the pages. If the pages are media-heavy (lots of large images or other media) then yes, the pages load faster since Google scales and recodes the images on the servers before sending them to your device, and optimizes other page content also. However, the device still needs to render the layout of the page, which can be slow on mobile devices. This happens on the device and requires CPU+RAM, and is unaffected by the bandwodth optimization. Also, since some content is compressed when sent from Google's optimization servers, it needs to be decompressed on the device, which uses CPU.

All in all, reducing data helps move the bottleneck from the bandwidth to the device itself, and the benefit of the setting depends on the content of the pages and the performance of your device.