I was considering buying a new phone but I installed CM on my 2nd gen Moto E and that solved most of performance issues (so far, remains to be seen if it holds up.)
CyanogenMod has less bloat, and more actually useful core functionality, which means I need fewer apps. (For example, no need for something like Twilight since it has adaptive brightness/hue built-in.)
CyanogenMod is fantastic, but even then, the devs have to work with what they've got. Support for Exynos SOCs has traditionally been sketchy because Samsung plays games with xda devs and is slow to push kernel patches. And even with snapdragon SOCs I've had stuff happen like LTE and wifi 802.11n stop working after flashing with CyanogenMod.
CyanogenMod is a very high-quality android distro, but sometimes they're really stuck doing the near-impossible.
Their stock configuration doesn't even have root available unless you enable it in the hidden developer settings menu. Even then it works like SuperSU and such, non-root by default and popups to prompt for root access when an app requests it.
Mine certainly doesn't. I use an official CM build for my phone and I still had to root it if I wanted that (which I did). Then, barring exploits of which I'm sure there are many, I have to approve each app that wants root access. No "default root".
CyanogenMod has less bloat, and more actually useful core functionality, which means I need fewer apps. (For example, no need for something like Twilight since it has adaptive brightness/hue built-in.)