Blokada 5 has been very nice to me, no root, and doesn't use much battery (android tells me 4% after a full day). Only downside is that it counts as a VPN connection, so if you want to connect to another VPN you have to turn it off temporarily.
Vpn adblocker like using protonvpn with netshield to block ads and malware. Also, you can can put ublock origin in any firefox based browser like Mull and Fennec
When I'm outside my home network, I rely on Tracker Control (installed via F-Droid) for most traffic. And the usual uBlock Origin and such for my mobile Firefox browser.
Set your DNS to AdGuard servers.
Downloads the Mull Browser from F-Droid with the uBlockOrigin addon, so you can browse the internet without ads.
Download a Firewall: Netguard is recommended. Apps that don't have internet can't load ads.
If you have root:
Firewall: AfWall+
Also, use the app "App Manager" from F-Droid to disable all app components that have "ad" in their name.
With this multi-layer approach you'll deal with 99.99% of ads
I may be a crazy old bastard but I have never used an ad blocker. I just use plain simple blacklists. Too many ads or obtrusive ads go on the list and I just don't see those sites anymore. Otherwise I'm fine with ads.
I assume you're adding the blacklist into your host file? How big is your block file? I remember one think that finally pushed me to use pihole and adguard a few years ago was due to my large host file causing >1s dns lookup time. Moving to pihole improved performance significantly in my case. Not sure if OS these days can handle large host file without huge performance impact though.