I agree with PPs that it can be a case of quality over quantity, so fewer hours doesn't necessarily equate to lower performance.
My 10yo swims 4.5 hours over 4 sessions and has 11 of 14 possible County times (might squeak a twelfth at the last remaining gala of the year if she's lucky, but it isn't something she's keen to swim LC anyway as it's her #4 form. 200Br... Shudder...), with 2 of those times fast enough for the next age category. On paper she is expected to make a good number of finals come January but will likely just miss out on medals, which isn't too shabby for the time commitment. She has other hobbies, and it feels too soon to be putting her in a position where she has to choose to drop something: this works for us as a balance. I don't want her to burn out and I believe her other hobbies make her a stronger swimmer in terms of discipline, physical literacy and strengthening supporting muscle groups.
We are a small club with limited pool time, and use HIIT-style training. None of our coaches are the kind that write the set up on a white board then settle down to a good hour+ of doom scrolling or the ones who turn up unprepared without a written plan, both of which I see regularly from other clubs' coaches who train in lanes alongside us at points throughout the week. As a club, we get a good number of regional qualifiers and a few national qualifiers, with one of the latter picking up a couple of medals over the summer, so our approach to training is clearly a workable and successful one.
Can you go and watch a few sessions from the gallery at the new club to get a feel for their ethos and training approach?
I wouldn't pick a club based on friends, as it is very unlikely they will regularly be together. DDs have both left friends behind by moving squad as well as been left behind when their friends have progressed ahead of them. This has particularly been true of Summer born DD1 and her Autumn born school friends, who are therefore in an older competing year and are always shifted ahead of DD to give them a better chance of achieving their tougher qualifying times. DDs still get to hang out with their friends at meets or chat in the showers (if the squads' sessions align), but it isn't as frequent as they'd like. Even in the same squad, there is no guarantee of being in the same lane and being able to snatch a few sentences between lengths.
We have 3 clubs that are equidistant to us plus a couple more at an slightly further but acceptable distance. I picked our club based on a mixture of parent feedback, ethos, training times, pool locations and results.