UTF-8 content type meta tag is slowing down the page loading, why?

[mattheart]

I'm setting the following meta tag to set the content type and in doing so the page load time jumps by about 30% (350 --> 500 msec using chrome dev tools and firefox firebug). Note: I have it placed first thing inside the tag to prevent re-rendering of page content. Also, the size of the page in kb is essentially the same, so that is not the issue.meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" If i don't include the tag, chars don't render properly. If i remove it and instead add the header to my PHP as per below, everything is fast again.header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');So my first question is, do i actually need the meta tag or is the header enough for all browsers? I've heard i need the meta tag so forms work properly, but it seems the header may be good enough.My second question is, why on earth should this tag affect the load time, that just seems plain crazy?