I think it is not fair to compare xtrabackup backup of MySQL server when it is under heavy write load on HDD and offline tar compressed backup when no other IO is done. More fair would be to compare xtrabackup backup of server under heavy load with uncompressed tar backup of mysql datadir under the same load. Though tar would still have advantage because it doesn't calculate checksums and copies less redo logs.
I think it is not fair to compare xtrabackup backup of MySQL server when it is under heavy write load on HDD and offline tar compressed backup when no other IO is done. More fair would be to compare xtrabackup backup of server under heavy load with uncompressed tar backup of mysql datadir under the same load. Though tar would still have advantage because it doesn't calculate checksums and copies less redo logs.