Are SVG fonts still working in Google Chrome?
Chrome is no longer supporting SVG Fonts as of Chrome 38 because they see it as a workaround for poor font rendering (just like how you said the SVG version 'looks better'). SVG fonts don't support kerning or ligatures. It's also important to note that IE doesn't support SVG fonts and Firefox never will.
You can read more about it here:
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink-dev/pYbbUcYvlYY