Morbid curiosity made me swap from Chrome to Opera's 'gaming browser' but its early 2000s custom ringtone vibes give me the ick

Opera GX, Opera's gaming browser, has been on my radar for some time. It has edgy marketing, a very meme-heavy X account, and catches my eye every few months for some strange new addition made to its browser. Opera GX is the browser that implemented an anti-Valentine's Day mod and can fake your search history.

It has been catching headlines for a while for being not like the other browsers. And though I make fun of it, some of that reputation seems fair. A built-in VPN and a handy sourcing of gaming information in the browser's main hub make it stand out. A mixture of morbid curiosity and actual curiosity got the best of me and I've been using it regularly for a few months now.

I found Opera GX to be a surprisingly good experience, but one that ultimately just wasn't right for me. There are plenty of rather useful features but also so much customisation, and extra (sometimes pointless feeling) features that get lost in the noise. I often find myself asking 'Why does my browser need this?' and the answer is 'It doesn't, but it's kinda funny'. A browser is effectively a middleman between you and the information you are looking for, so adding a custom UI, sounds, and more feels needless. It's all doing just a little too much.

Opera GX feels like the stereotype of a gaming laptop. Its angular UI reminds me of the aesthetic of the recent MSI Titan 18 HX A14V, a gaming laptop as over the top as its name. I think a lot of my initial scepticism about Opera GX comes from the fact that it's a browser. If I was told a new gaming console was trying innovative things or is packed full of features like Opera GX, I can understand that, but browsers seem to work their best when they just get out of your way.

Chrome is simple, and even then, I'm tempted to move back to Edge to avoid the extra few clicks of getting Google's browser up and running on a new rig. Even Edge has its rough edges, though (sorry, I couldn't help it).

However, as a grander space you open up when you turn on your PC, Opera GX starts to make a bit more sense to me. GX Corner, the home tab of the browser, has a built-in release calendar for upcoming video games and even tells you about big sales on different platforms.

Right now, as I turn it on, I'm informed Left 4 Dead 2 and Portal 2 are both 90% off. However, if you don't fancy being bombarded with what are effectively ads, you can turn this all off in settings. Alongside these tabs in the GX Corner are game trailers, daily gaming news, and other tidbits. This is a genuinely good part of the browser, and easy to navigate. It is pretty central to the Opera GX experience, as proven by the fact it can't be closed without actually turning it all off in settings.

GX.Daily, a mixture of news, deals, and events in GX Corner is oddly personalised and occasionally inflammatory. At the top of my feed sat a post from the PCMR Reddit making a joke about RTX 5090 burning inside of rigs, and underneath that, GX.Daily said that Sony's February State of Play disappointed fans. I somewhat agree with the last one but the browser's attempt to effectively be a buddy is something that can be spotted through the community, the X account, and even the browser itself. This all leads to a 'like it or hate it' style browser, and that's only further enunciated with the UI.

The UI is initially a smattering of blacks and reds, with the browser itself coming in dark mode from the start. You can change the theme from settings, or download 'mods' which can customize the looks, and even sounds of the browser. Interestingly, the browser from startup without changing any settings has sounds when you close and open tabs. These can be turned off or even changed to fit a Cyberpunk 2077 or Zenless Zone Zero theme, which is a level of customisation that certainly helps Opera GX stand out among its contemporaries.

There's in-browser music, which thankfully automatically turns off when you're playing games or watching videos, but browser closing and opening sounds aren't quite as dynamic.

After a few weeks with it, it all got a bit much. I stopped paying attention to the customisation features and ended up turning off all the sounds as they ended up distracting me.

You can use community-created mods, which means you can add joke mods to your browser like a mod of a spinning fish or a monkey driving around Los Santos from Grand Theft Auto. There's an irreverence Opera GX pays towards the traditional browser market that makes the browser feel unique.

If you're looking for a quick distraction from doom scrolling, one of the most interesting features of Opera GX is a built-in game store. You can play and even buy games all to play in the browser. The first free game I saw, DPS Idle, was a simple but effective idle clicker game that I could easily slot away in a tab when I wanted a break. The idea of budding developers testing out their games to a wider market through the likes of Opera GX, before deciding if they want to go through the process of getting it on Steam is enticing to me and Opera does a good job at putting those games in front of eyes with easy-to-search tags.

In a sense, this focus on customisation, specifically with a community angle, reminds me of those early days of 2000s mobile phones—the joy of downloading super low-resolution wallpapers to display on your screen or a beer-drinking app just to show your friend, before uninstalling.

There's something quite fun about the exploration of Opera GX that serves well as a party piece but quickly lost that shine for me. The games are still interesting but I stopped paying attention to the mods, and a lot of the GX.Daily news. Most of the extra functions, apart from the built-in VPN, fell by the wayside.

Having spent a few months now with Opera GX, I feel very torn on it. I like a lot of what it does and enjoy how community-focused it is, even if I think the marketing can be a bit too much. I like the idea of lots of customisation in practice, but it mostly became a distraction. Opera GX almost functions like its own OS or social space. It feels like an introduction into a community but I don't need all of that to look up cute pictures of animals or google the amount of CUDA cores in an RTX 5090 (it's 21,760 if you're interested).

Opera GX will likely hover on my rig for when I need quick access to a VPN but I don't know if it's really done enough for my day-to-day browsing experience for me to redownload on future devices. All those extra little features become cumbersome when all I want to do is google a burning question or watch YouTube. I know a few people who stand by Opera GX, but with the way I use it now, it mostly feels like Chrome but edgy.

The release calendar is pretty handy though.