Weird.

use Benchmark qw(cmpthese);
use List::Util qw(first);

@_= ( (0)x1000, 1, (0)x8999 );

cmpthese -1, {
    func => sub { first { $_ == 1 } @_ },
    imper => sub { for ( @_ ) { next unless $_ == 1; return $_ } },
}
__END__
          Rate imper  func
imper 518950/s    --  -20%
func  649177/s   25%    --
[download]

This is closer to what I was doing

#! perl -slw
use strict;
use Benchmark qw[ cmpthese ];
use List::Util qw[ first ];

our @array = 1 .. 100_000;

cmpthese( -1, {
    func_10th => q[ 
        my $first = first{ length > 3 } @array;
#        print "F:$first";
    ],
    iter_10th => q[
        my $first;
        for ( @array ) {
            next unless length > 3;
            $first = $_;
            last;
        }
#        print "I:$first";
    ],
    func_last => q[ 
        my $first = first{ length > 5 } @array;
#        print "F:$first";
    ],
    iter_last => q[
        my $first;
        for ( @array ) {
            next unless length > 5;
            $first = $_;
            last;
        }
#        print "I:$first";
    ],
});
__END__
P:\test>381208
            Rate func_last iter_last func_10th iter_10th
func_last 22.0/s        --      -16%      -98%      -99%
iter_last 26.1/s       18%        --      -98%      -99%
func_10th 1196/s     5336%     4488%        --      -56%
iter_10th 2706/s    12201%    10282%      126%        --
[download]

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks.

"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"Think for yourself!" - Abigail
"Memory, processor, disk in that order on the hardware side. Algorithm, algorithm, algorithm on the code side." - tachyon

I prefer not to compare apples and oranges:

use Benchmark qw[ cmpthese ];
use List::Util qw[ first ];

our @array = 1 .. 100_000;

cmpthese( -1, {
    func_10th => sub {
        first { length > 3 } @array;
    },
    iter_10th => sub {
        for ( @array ) {
            return $_ if length > 3;
        }
    },
});

cmpthese( -1, {
    func_last => sub {
        first { length > 5 } @array;
    },
    iter_last => sub {
        for ( @array ) {
            return $_ if length > 5;
        }
    },
});
__END__
            Rate func_10th iter_10th
func_10th  718/s        --      -77%
iter_10th 3139/s      337%        --
            Rate iter_last func_last
iter_last 29.4/s        --      -29%
func_last 41.1/s       40%        --
[download]

The results are similar if I run your code though.

Over here, first always wins given a sufficiently large number of iterations.

Makeshifts last the longest.