It's really very hard to beat the traditional immersion chiller. At the end of the day, there is no method that will get a beer below your cooling water temperature due to those pesky thermodynamics laws. Immersion chillers make it easier to input colder water and, to boot, are easy to clean and maintain. No pumps required!
Now, an argument can be made that the Therminator, etc, is faster at cooling the wort. The word on the street is that faster is, like, logarithmically better. First off, it's maybe 15 minutes faster, and my whole recipe book is set up around a 15 minute whirlpool and hop steep anyway. Second off, the entire Australian brewing scene is based off of beers that they do not cool. They let it sit in an airtight container until it reaches pitching temperature for several days, and yet, in spite of this they brew some badass beers. Freaky, I know. Controversial, I know. But, hey, remember when they thought you absolutely, positively had to have hops in your yeast starter?
