Compression

By archive format
ZIP format provides lower compression in all sets, but often shows an important speed advantage on most of other formats (when evaluating fastest applications).
Optimized ZIP compression in PeaZip (provided by 7z backend) consistently achieves a significant advantage in compression ratio mantaining a competitive speed.
RAR format shows a clear and consistent advantage in terms of compression ratio over ZIP, with a moderate decrease of speed.
ZIPX format is slower than RAR in all sets. In terms of compression ratio, in ideal conditions (set 1), it can be a good match even for 7Z and ARC, but in other conditions (set 2) it provides a compression ratio comparable to RAR.
7Z format and the experimental ARC format provide the best overall compression ratio, with ARC worthing being noticed for excellent compression speed comparable with ZIP format.

By application
IZArc achieves slowest speed in ZIP format, providing an average compression level. In 7Z format IZArc was slower than PeaZip in both sets, providing better compression ratio in set 1 and worse in set 2.
WinRar scores fastest ZIP compression, and with RAR format compression it reaches improved compression ratio at a reasonable cost in terms of speed.
WinZip performs on average in terms of speed and compression ratio for ZIP format. With ZIPX format WinZip provides a slower but in some cases better compressor than RAR.
PeaZip provides best ZIP compression level preserving an average speed. With 7Z format PeaZip achieves higher compression ratio than RAR and ZIPX, at cost of lower speed. The experimental ARC format is very promising as it provides both high compression ratio and high compression speed.

 

Extraction

By archive format
RAR format shows to be a good match even for ZIP format in terms of extraction speed, an excellent result because RAR consistently provides a better compression ratio than ZIP.
7Z format extraction is slower than RAR and ZIP ones, but this factor is balanced by the decisive advantages of 7Z over ZIP and RAR in terms of compression ratio.
ARC format is impressive for its compression efficiency, both in terms of speed and ratio, but extraction is significantly slower than 7Z format on set 1 where pure extraction performances are more relevant (difference is lower on set 2).
In the same situation, in set 1 ZIPX format extraction shows to be extremely slow, while being only marginally slower than 7Z on set 2.

By application
IZArc provides significantly slower ZIP extraction than the average of other competitors, but achieves average extraction times for RAR and 7Z formats, especially on set 2.
WinRar is consistently amongst fastest extractors, with noticeably good results on ZIP and RAR format in set 2.
WinZip shows good extraction speed for 7Z format, but is consistently slower than PeaZip extracting ZIPX format.
It is also significantly slower than the average of competitors extracting RAR format in set 1, and ZIP format in set 2.
PeaZip is consistently faster than WinZip on ZIPX extraction, and on average for other formats, with proportionally better results in set 1 (where pure extraction speed is more relevant) rather than in set 2.