True but LWP::UserAgent is slower than some other methods probably (as already said) down to its flexibility. Not that I am recommending HTTP::Lite (in fact HTTP::Lite pod says use LWP) but to retrieve a file on our local network with LWP::UserAgent and HTTP::Lite where I know it is UTF-8 encoded (so simplified) I get:

use 5.010;
use strict;
use warnings;
use Benchmark;
use Encode;

use HTTP::Lite;
use LWP::UserAgent;
my $url = 'xxx.yyy.zzz/file.dat';

sub http_lite {
    my $r = HTTP::Lite->new;
    my $sts = $r->request($url);
    die "failed" if $sts != 200;

    my $decoded = Encode::decode('utf8', $r->body, Encode::FB_CROAK);
}

sub lwp_useragent{

    my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
    my $r = $ua->get($url);
    die "failed" if !$r->is_success;
    my $body = $r->decoded_content;
}

timethese(1000, {
    'lite' => sub{http_lite()},
    'lwp' => sub{lwp_useragent()}
   });


Benchmark: timing 1000 iterations of lite, lwp...
      lite:  3 wallclock secs ( 1.53 usr +  0.60 sys =  2.13 CPU) @ 46
+9.48/s (n=1000)
       lwp:  6 wallclock secs ( 4.19 usr +  0.58 sys =  4.77 CPU) @ 20
+9.64/s (n=1000)
[download]

As I said, I'm not recommending HTTP::Lite just pointing out the difference in a simple case. It does not do HTTPS and defaults to HTTP 1.0 etc and maybe there is something else I've forgotten in the above example that LWP::UserAgent is doing that the HTTP::Lite sub is not.