How can I improve performance of an AddRange method on a custom BindingList?

You can pass in a List in the constructor and make use of List<T>.Capacity.

But i bet, the most significant speedup will come form suspending events when adding a range. So I included both things in my example code.

Probably needs some finetuning to handle some worst cases and what not.

public class MyBindingList<I> : BindingList<I>
{
    private readonly List<I> _baseList;

    public MyBindingList() : this(new List<I>())
    {

    }

    public MyBindingList(List<I> baseList) : base(baseList)
    {
        if(baseList == null)
            throw new ArgumentNullException();            
        _baseList = baseList;
    }

    public void AddRange(IEnumerable<I> vals)
    {
        ICollection<I> collection = vals as ICollection<I>;
        if (collection != null)
        {
            int requiredCapacity = Count + collection.Count;
            if (requiredCapacity > _baseList.Capacity)
                _baseList.Capacity = requiredCapacity;
        }

        bool restore = RaiseListChangedEvents;
        try
        {
            RaiseListChangedEvents = false;
            foreach (I v in vals)
                Add(v); // We cant call _baseList.Add, otherwise Events wont get hooked.
        }
        finally
        {
            RaiseListChangedEvents = restore;
            if (RaiseListChangedEvents)
                ResetBindings();
        }
    }
}

You cannot use the _baseList.AddRangesince BindingList<T> wont hook the PropertyChanged event then. You can bypass this only using Reflection by calling the private Method HookPropertyChanged for each Item after AddRange. this however only makes sence if vals (your method parameter) is a collection. Otherwise you risk enumerating the enumerable twice.

Thats the closest you can get to "optimal" without writing your own BindingList. Which shouldnt be too dificult as you could copy the source code from BindingList and alter the parts to your needs.

CSharpie explained in his answer that the bad performance is due to the ListChanged-event firing after each Add, and showed a way to implement AddRange for your custom BindingList.

An alternative would be to implement the AddRange functionality as an extension method for BindingList<T>. Based on on CSharpies implementation:

/// <summary>
/// Extension methods for <see cref="System.ComponentModel.BindingList{T}"/>.
/// </summary>
public static class BindingListExtensions
{
  /// <summary>
  /// Adds the elements of the specified collection to the end of the <see cref="System.ComponentModel.BindingList{T}"/>,
  /// while only firing the <see cref="System.ComponentModel.BindingList{T}.ListChanged"/>-event once.
  /// </summary>
  /// <typeparam name="T">
  /// The type T of the values of the <see cref="System.ComponentModel.BindingList{T}"/>.
  /// </typeparam>
  /// <param name="bindingList">
  /// The <see cref="System.ComponentModel.BindingList{T}"/> to which the values shall be added.
  /// </param>
  /// <param name="collection">
  /// The collection whose elements should be added to the end of the <see cref="System.ComponentModel.BindingList{T}"/>.
  /// The collection itself cannot be null, but it can contain elements that are null,
  /// if type T is a reference type.
  /// </param>
  /// <exception cref="ArgumentNullException">values is null.</exception>
  public static void AddRange<T>(this System.ComponentModel.BindingList<T> bindingList, IEnumerable<T> collection)
  {
    // The given collection may not be null.
    if (collection == null)
      throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(collection));

    // Remember the current setting for RaiseListChangedEvents
    // (if it was already deactivated, we shouldn't activate it after adding!).
    var oldRaiseEventsValue = bindingList.RaiseListChangedEvents;

    // Try adding all of the elements to the binding list.
    try
    {
      bindingList.RaiseListChangedEvents = false;

      foreach (var value in collection)
        bindingList.Add(value);
    }

    // Restore the old setting for RaiseListChangedEvents (even if there was an exception),
    // and fire the ListChanged-event once (if RaiseListChangedEvents is activated).
    finally
    {
      bindingList.RaiseListChangedEvents = oldRaiseEventsValue;

      if (bindingList.RaiseListChangedEvents)
        bindingList.ResetBindings();
    }
  }
}

This way, depending on your needs, you might not even need to write your own BindingList-subclass.