Hah well that didnt take long…
Chromium crashed on me a few times today with the classic “Aw, Snap!” page… but that might be more of an indication that I have an issue with one of the modules and not with how it is displayed. But as far as I know pm2 can be setup to auto-restart so if the “Aw, Snap!” page I’m seeing would cause the node process to crash, pm2 would auto-restart it.

tl;dr one difference between the two ways. Chromium doesnt auto-restart on crashes. pm2 would autorestart but might hide the underlying issues if you are not monitoring logs/restarts.