json_encode in PHP: data growth

Ummm. What's the problem, gentlemen? Sure of the encoding — forward)
\r
php -r 'var_dump(json_encode("test"));'
string(26) ""\\u0442\\u0435\\u0441\\u0442""
\r
php -r 'var_dump(json_encode("test", JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE));'
string(10) ""test""

It was in a q& a about it. What to do? To accept and enable gzip.

To use self-made json::encode — there is code in 20 lines.
And even to feed him cp1251 without an envelope.
Such a decision only one negative — working at hundreds of times the built-in solution.

This way of encoding non-Latin characters is, so to speak, the only reliable way to ensure an accurate representation of such symbols regardless of web-page coding. But it is a shame that json_encode() has no option to disable encoding if the encoding of the page and the JSON data is obviously the same.