Is reload cancelling faster?

Today I learned that, for all heroes with limited ammunition, they can reload cancel their weapons with a melee attack.

What I'm curious about is, does it really save time? Is it really a "cancel"? I'll give an example.

With Reaper's shotguns, if he presses reload, the ammo indicator on the bottom right will instantly refresh to 8/8, but it will still play the "drop gun, pull new ones out of thin air" animation. If I melee after pressing reload, it will allow me to fire as soon as the melee animation takes place.

However, what I've seen is that if I press melee immediately after I press reload, there seems to be a delay as to when I can fire the shotguns. If I wait just a half-second later to press melee, then I can fire almost immediately. Because of this delay, I'm wondering if reload cancelling really does save time, or is the reload time set, regardless of cancelling?

No, it is not. After a reload cancel there is a delay, which is equal to the time required to reload without canceling the animation. I suppose that reload animations were made to fit the reload time, not the other way around. Here are two GIFs,which demonstrate that (by reddit user - daddatv):

At full speed

Frame by frame

I did some testing with McCree and Soldier 76 and compared the times in a video so feel free to check it out!

Frame perfectly, I think so.

In my testing with Mei, it's equal, but I also use a timing that's more consistent I think, rather than perfect. My projectiles start at an angle though.

As DGarvanski referenced, /u/daddatv found out Reaper can shoot two frames faster by interrupting reload with melee.