Performance - custom php block or views to use in panels
Personally, I don't worry about performance of little things like this.

You also don't need to resort to Views to get this information.

If you are using the Node template page from Page Manager, then you can


edit the page
select the variant
edit the content
click the gear on the panel you want to Add Content
click the Node tab
click Node Title


This will then be a normal panel pane that you can place as you need it.  This is one trick to get node content above the page title on complicated layouts.