You kinda just made his point by saying you use a launcher on your Nexus. The fact of the matter is, you're adding all of these "extras" to your Nexus that TW has baked in. I've seen enough side by side comparisons with the Nexus 5 and S5 and Nexus 6 vs S6 and Nexus 6 vs Note 4 to know better.
and for those "occasional" times when the Nexus is faster, it's so minuscule, you can hardly use those situations to call TW a resource hog. [emoji2]
But hey, you're happy with yours and I'm happy with mine, its all good. [emoji106] Having a choice is what matters.
S5 tap'n