Minibits is a completely different model. Unlike with self-custody Lightning, the sats in your wallet are just tokens representing actual Bitcoin, and are only indirectly connected to an on-chain UTXO so ffar as the eCash mint is being honest about their creation and destruction.

This gives you arguably better privacy than Lightning, but with the downside of trusting the mint. However, they also manage the liquidity for payments outside of the mint, which means you don't have to.

It is a trade-off of trust in order to gain convenience and privacy.

I have also noticed that zappung via NWC is slower with Minibits than when using my own Alby Hub.