I repeat: all of this is VERY new. It's a pilot program. It may or may not be easier or faster. No-one knows.
(and as others wrote above, yes, eventually it should - logically - be faster. IRCC will probably eventually move to have most or even all spousal apps done this way. But it's a pilot programme. In other words, this is beta testing.
They started an online portal for citizenship applications - which has turned out to be considerably slower than paper applications. 2 month AOR vs 5 months AOR for online. Safe to assume; while it's testing phase, online might actually follow similar trend and be slower.