Caching deformed mesh for faster playback (Alembic, MDD ?)

Hey,
I’ve seen that Maya 2019 got a new tool to cache animated mesh for faster playback :
http://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2019/ENU/?guid=GUID-AEFFDE75-1F81-4E38-B1D9-9E4C4D23939C

I was wondering if something along these lines could be done in blender.
What I would like to do , is to select a linked character, run an operator and get a cached version, that could play faster than the original.
Then add some operators to remove the cached version and go back to the original. Nothing fancier than that , or nothing automated / transparent , just plain old school style …

I’ve tried with alembic , but the result was slower, is that normal ? (That was a regular cartoony character made of several meshes.)
I never used alembic before so maybe I missed some important settings…

now I’m thinking also about using some .MDD, I know it’s kind of pain to export a linked character with it, I was wondering if it’s worth it, or is there already a piece of python code laying somewhere that does that ?

What are your thought ? have you tested something similar ? any hint that can help me avoid wasting my time ?

Thanks in advance !