What are the best launchers? Well best as in most pleasing to the eye.
I have tried many launchers: TouchWiz, Apex, Nova, Holo, LauncherPro, Solo, Google Now, Trebuchet. The most complete and smooth launcher is Nova.
Nova: Zero lag, many features & ultra smooth when changing between pages.
Apex: Good one too, but laggy when changing pages.
LauncherPro: Outdated
Holo: Cool but on phones < android 4.0.
Touchwiz: Fine but prefer an AOSP based launcher.
Google Now: -
Trebuchet: Good but not so many features (yet).