Looking to see if my deployment methods are outdated. Should I just being using SDF directly instead of bundles now for suiteapp deployments to clients? I looked around in suiteanswers first I swear. I can't seem to find a best practice / whitepaper for it

If you can switch to SDF, that is recommended. SDF is the future 🙂

I already use SDF for dev I just don't use it for deployment