Torrents are better suited for large files that tend to go over the bandwidth limit imposed by certain hosting companies, MEGA Free only gives you 5GB, after that you have to wait either 4 or 6 hours for it to reset.
Torrents can be fast but only if there's enough people sharing (seeders) in comparison to those who are still downloading it (peers), if there's only a few seeders and a bunch of peers then the speeds are going to be abysmal, equally if not worse than most free hosting services. Unfortunately most people who use torrents are selfish and tend to delete their files as soon as they've got what they wanted, or simply close their torrent applications and don't open them again until they need something again, which is basically the same. They are like leeches, they take but don't give.
But before a seed base grows the file must first come from someone and that someone is you, the uploader. Most people who upload/download torrents nowadays use a VPN to hide their IPs, because leaving your actual IP unmasked can pose a risk to yourself by revealing your location to hackers or even the authorities if your country is one of those fighting piracy. Speaking of which, torrents have a bad rep in that they are strongly associated with pirates - even if you're just using torrents to share something that is yours, people are still going to think it was stolen. In truth torrents are a mean of sharing media between people but over the years became the main method pirates use to conduct their deeds.
All in all, I like using torrents for larger files and JDownloader for smaller, browser downloads. The latter not only is free its also compatible with all sorts of hosting services (Google Drive, Mega, Opencloud, UpFile, etc). Both applications allow you to adjust their download speed, plus you can stop whenever you wish and it will continue where you left off without losing any data. JDownloader in particular is awesome because it goes over the speed cap imposed by free hosting services AND you don't have to click after X seconds to start it, it starts on its own and sometimes even decompresses the .rar files into a folder after finishing for you to use right away!
Again, if you're going to use .torrents (or any download website for that matter) its extremely important you know whether or not they're legit and trustworthy. Many websites have fake "Download" buttons that are traps, some ask for you to fill in a survey or your phone / personal info in order to unlock the download (again, fake) and others you have to click several times to get to the actual download (each time opening a bunch of misleading pop ups). Be careful out there, if it feels shady then don't use it.
