I've only seen 7zip go slow when it's using heavy LZMA or PPMd compression. Otherwise extracting zips is very fast... Although it's probably using zlib for the zip files decompression (I recall gzip/zlib had a demo program to show it could decompress zip files a while back).

If it's a lifetime license I can justify the high one-time payment cost.

Though I use 7zip. It's free and can read all formats I need.

Back on Windows, I was using Total Commander for all my packing/unpacking needs. Nothing could beat that.

Yeah, but do they pay to use it or not?

No one seems to be buying WinRAR. I guess this is why its that expensive. You'll need WinRAR with some pesky RAR files that are tough to open with 7-zip but otherwise, you're missing nothing with 7-zip for free.

Well, you get a lot in that small package...budum bah!

Not anymore (since 5.x branch)

For all the use I've gotten out of it, I feel it was worth the 35 euro registration fee. Still use it on an almost daily basis.

Oh so they removed that feature.

Another one:
"Recovery record and recovery volumes allow to reconstruct even physically damaged archives."
Can't say that it is so necessary, but it would be useful in 7z.

Try this one.....7-Zip 9.20

Maybe it's because a lot of people around the world has been exploiting the advantage of WinRAR of having a free version of the program, as the free version itself is already enough for people to be able to extract the files they download from the internet.

WinRAR is expensive mostly because the licence does not really address to home users as much as companies. They have offers for bulk licences that go as less as 7$/computer. Also, on companies, this "nagware" thing it's not seen too well by officials. Legally, if an software is telling you that the trial period is over, you should either delete that software or buy it in order to use it further more.
WinRAR was a thing when it was released. It was able to repair broken archives, self-extract archives, the possibility to "break" a file into more archives, were really great when it was released. But, at the moment, i don't really see the point of all that. While you have 7zip free, you don't need to send an self extracting archive, as the person that's receiving can get 7zip too. Also, archiving for specified volumes, again, not such an important feature right now, as we don't use diskettes anymore. We even don't use CDs/DVDs, as we have P2P or data travelers for physical transfer. And broken archive thing... Yea, didn't saw one of those since i got rid of floppy disks. But i actually know people that are still using floppies, so it might be useful for them.
Their RAR5 thing might be useful for archiving big file. Again, can be useful for companies, as they usually need to archive their work.

Also, let's not forget the "commodity factor". People got used with it since they first started using modern PCs.