Well, I'll number these instead of responding to each of your points directly:
1) I was talking about level 5 (fighter with 2 attacks and action surge).
2) With an 11th level wizard, the player of the PC will have often started at much lower level, possibly 1. Yes, he has to pick 16 spells each day, but 12 or 14 of those are the same most of the time. He's been playing this PC for months and knows him.
3) During a round, he definitely has more options. But, they tend to fall into one of three basic categories:
a) Cast Cantrip. No brainer, doesn't even have to think further.
b) Cast offensive spell. Out of the 16, about 9-10 of those are probably offensive. Why 9-10? He'll want to have one of each level and that's 6 minimum. Also, most of his lowest (i.e. 1st to 2nd) level offensive spells do not help at all. He'll probably have 1 or 2 of level one and 1 or 2 of level two, just to blow off low level slots and get more than a cantrip off. But, most of his offensive spells come from higher level slots. He'll want to be offensively worthwhile as much as possible, so a majority of his spells known will be dedicated to offense.
c) Cast defensive or miscellaneous spell. Out of the 16, about 6 or 7. Shield, Fly, Invisibility, Detect Magic, Dispel Magic. He'll probably have a list of go to the well lower level spells to use up his 1st through 3rd level slots up with. These are also for non-combat situations.
Obviously, each player will choose differently, but the bottom line is that most players will cast offense over defense a good portion of the time in combat. In a 6-8 encounter day (as per the DMG guidelines), he'll want to cast 1 to 2 spells each medium or harder encounter, and at most 1 spell per easy encounter out of his 16 spells per day. Outside of that, he'll rely on cantrips. His decision making process is a bit limited with 1 to 2 spells per encounter. So, he'll mostly be in a) and b) above in combat.
He has 16 spell slots. Early on in encounters, his decision probably matters little (although some player might agonize over it). Later on in encounters as slots get used up, he'll start getting squeezed to the point that decisions are made for him. No more 3rd level slots, then no more 3rd level spells shy of bumping them up to higher level.
4) Nobody is going to be using Meteor Swarm for a long time. When they do, having played Champions a lot, rolling 40D6 takes a while to roll, but with 10 dice at a time and organizing the totals by groups of 10, it can take a minute or two to add it all up. So sure, one spell once per day at 17th level can be a bit more time consuming. The fighter makes up for that in the next encounter.
The 8 or 10 or 12 dice of a typical Fireball, that takes 10 seconds to add up. Less time than it takes for two attacks by the fighter which are probably about 10 seconds each once the to hit is determined (D10 plus mods), multiple damage dice are added together (if applicable), and other damage (str) is added to it. Critical, even longer. Yes, some players can do that in 3 or 4 seconds, but only if they roll to hit and damage at the same time. Does an 8 on the die hit? Well, how much is the total? 17 is well known and to hit is not even considered.
But, I agree with you. Slower players will take more time. Faster players less. Players of spell casters can really slow the game down if they are not fast and/or do not decide what to do ahead of time.
But even slow players using simple PCs can slow the game down. One player in our group is that way. He's pretty slow, almost agonizingly so.
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