The mobile version is better in that regard than the desktop version. You made me look and my Chrome uses only 300-400 MB of RAM (cached processes included) with 15 tabs open (which is not the case most of the time, i have 3-4 open usually, so the RAM usage is somewhere between 200-300 MB). This shouldn't really be an issue on smart devices with at least 2GB RAM, which was the standard years ago, now it's more like 3-4 GB even in not blatantly expensive models.
Opera is great, it was the first browser i used for a longer period, well before Chrome or Firefox was a thing. Then i used FF for a long time, until they effed up and let Chrome take their throne. I switched to Chrome and i never looked back. I prefer Chrome nowadays on all devices, because it's just more convenient having everything synced. And honestly i don't have any issue with it. It's fast and clean.
Every browser becomes slower, when the cache becomes significant. From time to time it's a good idea to clean it.
