I used this before I switched to Pi-hole. It worked quite well in combintion hosts file + uBlock origin + uMatrix. One thing though, more and more sites now serve ads and content from the same domain, meaning if you block ads at DNS level you'll block the content too.
I run Pi-hole too, can handle much more than the hosts file of a windows computer. It was a while since I used the hosts file to block ads but at that time the computer could lock up quite a while now and then, and the problem dissappeared when I cleared the hosts file again.
It's realy neat to get autoprotection for all your devices at the same time with the Pi-hole.
Just ad uBlock to the browser to remove the rest ads and get a much smother web experience without distractions :-)
also: hosts file can cause problems with things like Windows Update and other software that you might want to keep working. Pi-hole is easier to disable. I always forget that I installed some hosts file blocks with Blackbird ( https://www.getblackbird.net/ ) which is an otherwise pretty nice tool (aside from that and how it's unclear if you're enabling or disabling something, since the switches "toggle" something instead of expressing that you want to disable or enable it specifically).
+1 for pihole; rPis / odroids / SBCs / NUCs / home servers are easy enough to run that it's worth it.
