Некоторые моменты времени, сравнивая числовой dtype, dtype объекта и списки. Сделайте свои собственные выводы:
In [117]: x = np.arange(1000)
In [118]: xo=x.astype(object)
In [119]: np.sum(x)
Out[119]: 499500
In [120]: np.sum(xo)
Out[120]: 499500
In [121]: timeit np.sum(x)
10.8 µs ± 242 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100000 loops each)
In [122]: timeit np.sum(xo)
39.2 µs ± 673 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000 loops each)
In [123]: sum(x)
Out[123]: 499500
In [124]: timeit sum(x)
214 µs ± 6.58 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000 loops each)
In [125]: timeit sum(xo)
25.3 µs ± 4.54 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100000 loops each)
In [126]: timeit sum(x.tolist())
29.1 µs ± 26.7 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000 loops each)
In [127]: timeit sum(xo.tolist())
14.4 µs ± 120 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100000 loops each)
In [129]: %%timeit temp=x.tolist()
...: sum(temp)
6.27 µs ± 18.8 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100000 loops each)