With chrome you have more control over the start page, in that you can change it...

With chrome you have more control over the start page, in that you can change it from the default one to a totally different one, but when comparing opera's speed dial to chrome's default start page Opera's is definitely far superior (and more customizable). The speed dial is the main reason I use opera as well (I like it much better than any speed dial addons for chrome/firefox, and even vivaldi's speed dial)

edit: apparently there are opera addons that allow you to load a custom page instead of the speed dial so that may also be a moot point anyway