[mmgutz]

DMS | super heavyweight | sluggish | lots of eye candy, GUI configurable

Noctalia | welterweight | fast | professional look, GUI configurable

Waybar | lightweight | fast | minimal, DIY theming, hand configured

swaybar | flyweight | blazingly fast | ultra minimalist, hand configured

Noctalia uses about 70MB more RAM, and a little more CPU than Waybar. No brainer.

[arikrahman]

With v5 I wouldn't be surprised if they can even slim it down more than waybar. No dependency to worry about unlike waybar with gtk core.

[mmgutz]

If you consider the extras built into noctalia: notifications, screen lock (i think), wallpaper daemon .... daemons you have to install/configure piecemeal, noctalia is already in the ballpark of a waybar-based setup.