First thing to be aware of is that confirmation is unnecessary in many situations in bitcoin. In those situations, transactions can be considered to be nearly instant and confirmation time is unimportant.

Next thing to be aware of is that bitcoin provides orders of magnitude more security than any other decentralized crypto currency right now.

Finally, 10 minutes is a very short time to wait in those few situations where it isn't safe to accept an unconfirmed transaction.

Therefore, with immense security and short 10 minute confirmation times on average, it would seem that bitcoin provides the best compromise between time and level of security.