Consequences of ARCHIVELOG
if your database has its ARCHIVELOG disabled, you will lose data in case of a hardware failure (potentially all data entered since the last backup). If this is acceptable, then you can disable ARCHIVELOG.
On production instances it is common to have the requirement to NOT lose data (this would be the primary goal of a DBA). In that case the argument about performance is moot, you will turn ARCHIVELOG on because it is a requirement. Then you can have hot backups, they are not more complex than cold backups if you use RMAN, they also won't flush the database cache (improving performance). You can use RMAN to make incremental backups (instead of FULL cold backup) that will only log changes since the last backup.
Furthermore, with enough IO (add more disks), you can setup the database so that the writing of the archive logs doesn't impact performance noticeably.