Everyone picks up on tools differently. Yes, Blender has a complicated interface, that is a broad statement being made but once you tackle that hurdle you can produce amazing things, so I see. I dont like it so I dont use it. I use Maya which is for most other people a pain to work with. Sculptris was recommended from the creators of ZBrush, yes go ahead and try this one out, it is nice or grab the big brother ZBrush you can do amazing things with it too for mesh creations (In combination with Marvelous Designer for example), but yet again it has one of the most complicated interfaces and it takes around 2 weeks to get accustomed too and you know how to work with it. Making mesh is all about being comfortable with the tools you have. Maybe none of those is yours. Try Modo after that or 3DS Max, 3D Coat, whatever, all of these produce mesh, can sculpt it, are available for free with a student license to learn (some of them). Grab a trial and see.
As far as the lag goes, its not only the mesh vs sculpt. I have a 3000$ machine here and I still lag like hell regarding rez time and moving around/crossing sims. Connection also plays a big roll. Health of the region, script time and what not. The direction to go at least in my opinion, why mesh? Because flexi prims and sculpties are a thing offthe past. Now we arrived at Bento not that long ago which has nice animations in it, very high quality texture wise and the script load in it is amazing. Can you reach it with the old stuff? I doubt it but maybe I am wrong here and I havent met the flexi/sculpt wizards yet.