JSON::XS--which I love--is harder to edit by hand, has less support for objects/etc, and is on par with Storable for speed. I think it can be faster for certain strings/sizes but I also recall Storable being better for others. Oh, and YAML::XS was not around when those benchmarks were done so it might well be on the same playing field since it's C beneath too.

So, I recommend it too but I tend to personally use it for machine cases and Ajax only, never for human edited configuration, etc.