I went through exactly the same steps. Safari finally showing Favicons in the tab bar gave me the final push. This is probably the case for a bunch of "power users" I'd guess.

As Gruber (https://daringfireball.net/2017/08/safari_should_display_fav...) said:

> It might sound silly if you’re not a heavy user of browser tabs, but I am convinced that the lack of favicons is holding back Safari’s market share.