Group by more efficient than distinct?

I am trying to get a distinct set of rows from 2 tables.
After looking at someone else's query I noticed they were doing a group by

to obtain the unique list.

After comparing on multiple machines with several tables, it seems using 
group by to obtain a distinct list is substantially faster than using 
select distinct.

Is there any dissadvantage of using "group by" to obtain a unique list?

On a small dataset the difference was about 20% percent.

Group by
 HashAggregate  (cost=369.61..381.12 rows=1151 width=8) (actual 
time=76.641..85.167 rows=2890 loops=1)

Distinct
 Unique  (cost=1088.23..1174.53 rows=1151 width=8) (actual 
time=90.516..140.123 rows=2890 loops=1)

Although I don't have the numbers here with me, a simmilar result was 
obtaining against a query that would return 100,000 rows. 20% and more 
speed differnce between "group by" over "select distinct".   

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