Best option for comments?

I’m sure anybody who’s used wordpress is aware of the problems that is comments. I want to make it simple for people to comments, but avoid the endless amount of spam. I liked the idea of having people be signed up, and logged in to comment, that was until I myself went through that process. Create a username and email, wait for password to email to you, go back and change your password. When you don’t have a site that tons of people know and love, it’s just too complicated. Yet if you leave it so that there are no requirements to comment, I spend half my day sifting through spam comments and first time comments. So my question to you is what is the best solution to making comments easy for the reader, and keep spam out the best? Plugins or even specific settings. Thanks in advance.