Cooldown is always the same, the bow's "speed" is its aiming speed. A properly kited Elven Short Bow can be hilarious, as it's a short bow and gets fast speed, but it has upgrades that improve its max range, resulting in some extremely quick firing on anything anywhere.
As far as ranged weapon ranges go, it's pretty much in order of bolt spells, bolt spell with wand, shortbow, upgraded elven shortbow, longbow (just a bit longer than the upgraded shortbow), upgraded longbow (elven long bow and highlander long bow both get range upgrades), wing bow with upgrades, and ego wing bow.
The range of an ego bow increases as the level of the ego increases, and a wing bow already has pretty far range, so an ego wind bow can hit enemies that may be outside the minimum drawing distance sometimes. An elf with r1 Ranged Attack gets a significant buff to aiming speed, along with Final Shot when it can be used, resulting in the Ego Wing Bow basically letting you set auto-attack and keep anything except natural shield foes at max range.
I personally prefer upgraded elven short bows. They're quick, high wound, higher crit than longbows, and have almost the same range as a longbow. Plus they're 1x3 instead of 1x4 for longbows, much less the 2x3 for crossbows, so it's much easier to carry spares. Although with the change in combat, longbows have a significant advantage in that you can spam magnum, and take advantage of the high damage output. Though in a difficult dungeon I'd either go shortbow or highlander.