Why does Opera GX rarely come up in browser discussions?
I'm curious about people's experiences with Opera GX, particularly because it seems to be largely absent from broader discussions about web browsers despite being probably one of the most advertised online.
I tried it for a while, but I didn't find that it performed noticeably better than other browsers. My main impression was that it felt somewhat clunky, and that many of its more unusual settings and customization options added complexity without improving the actual browsing experience. I can understand the appeal of its visual style and gaming-oriented branding, but in practice, those features mostly felt unnecessary to me.
I've used Firefox for the past couple of years and have been happy with both its performance and general usability. More recently, I've started using DuckDuckGo's app on my phone, and I'm considering trying the desktop version as well.
For people who use Opera GX regularly, what does it offer that keeps you using it? Are there features that become more useful over time, or is its appeal mainly the interface and customization?
I'm also interested in why it rarely appears in browser recommendations or comparisons. Is that because of technical concerns, Opera's reputation, privacy considerations, or simply because it occupies a fairly specific niche?
These days I'm sort of allergic to most things marketed specifically to "gamers" as usually it's just all fluff (and in the case of physical products often overpriced garbage IMHO- like gamer chairs and Razer stuff)
I have tried GX at one point in the past just to see what it's like and it's just another glorified Chromium and doesn't have anything special that I think makes it enticing to use. I stick with Firefox forks at this point (Waterfox in particular).
I think it's just that there are a ton of Chromium-based options out there, and so, I think it's very much in a niche, and it doesn't really offer anything exciting even to people in that niche, so it just feels like this unnecessary product. That's not to say it's particularly bad at anything, it worked fine for me, just felt like a bunch of unnecessary "features". It's sort of the "RGB lighting of browsers" I guess
Edit: privacy was never a concern for me, but I understand many people steer clear because of it being owned by a Chinese company now. (I would honestly rather have a Chinese company harvest my data than a US one like Google anyway...), but this probably does contribute more to it staying niche even amongst Chromium browsers
Had they actually stuck with a non-Chromium engine, I would be slightly more interested or at least supportive (in that I definitely want to support having a variety of engines out there, not just Chromium and Firefox-based stuff).
So my experience with it isn't rare. The only thing I miss is the calendar with upcoming games or game related events that it had in the main screen, honestly.
As someone who remembers OG Opera, once it went to Chromium (along with Chrome dethroning IE), it kinda seemed pointless versus just having Chrome. I seem to also remember that some popular features went away? Maybe someone can jog my memory or correct me.
From the few ads I've seen for Opera during YouTube videos, it looked like many of the "features" it was adding to Chromium were superfluous things like animated backgrounds and RGB lighting sync. It's kind of crazy to me that they pivoted from making a browsing engine that was lauded for being especially quick and lightweight (iirc they had decent market share on lower end machines, especially Opera Mini on low end smartphones and feature phones) to essentially what appears to be hanging a bunch of bloatware on top of an existing browser platform.
Privacy concerns for Opera are a leading cause since they were bought by a Chinese company. There is no clear indication whether or not they do harvest your data, but people often find Chinese owned applications enough reason to steer clear.
Others mentioned it's Chromium based, which is enough reason for me to stay away. I'll stick with Firefox or similar.
I can't see it mentioned on their web site, but if I recall correctly they used to advertise the ability to limit how much CPU/memory/bandwith the browser consumes, freeing up resources for gaming. This would if anything make the browser perform worse, but might be worth it for gamers on low-end hardware.