diff --git a/adapter.go b/adapter.go
index 04b643b..8b455fc 100644
--- a/adapter.go
+++ b/adapter.go
@@ -23,10 +23,14 @@ const (
 type codings map[string]float64
 
 const (
-	// DefaultMinSize is the default minimum size for which we enable compression.
-	// 20 is a very conservative default borrowed from nginx: you will probably want
-	// to measure if a higher minimum size improves performance for your workloads.
-	DefaultMinSize = 20
+	// DefaultMinSize is the default minimum response body size for which we enable compression.
+	//
+	// 200 is a somewhat arbitrary number; in experiments compressing short text/markup-like sequences
+	// with different compressors we saw that sequences shorter that ~180 the output generated by the
+	// compressor would sometime be larger than the input.
+	// In general there can be no one-size-fits-all value: you will want to measure if a different
+	// minimum size improves end-to-end performance for your workloads.
+	DefaultMinSize = 200
 )
 
 // Adapter returns a HTTP handler wrapping function (a.k.a. middleware)