AUR, when I can. I run my own binary package repo. App images are an interesting concept, but usually they are compiled against ancient versions of glibc for increased compatibility. Optimizations and CVE patches may or may not be applied, LD lookups are longer, etc.

Yeah, that power metric can fluctuate wildly depending on how smart their display controller is. Throw VRR and / or event driven rendering into the mix and you get most of the benefits of both with the added benefit of limiting rendering bursts.