Don't worry, the Q400 will outclimb the -146 anyway and it's almost as fast at Mach 0.599....
I have not flown the Avro but the Q400 is a bit off-balance (or "unharmonious") on the controls with a rather stiff aileron and ridiculously nervous throttles which cannot be so much "moved" as "massaged" fore and back on approach. As a downside of the "lotsa power" you have to re-trim the thing whenever you move the power levers.
It's a shame Bombardier and Sextant Avionique (Thales) didn't use a little more 1990s technology when developing the -400. They were so set on providing a common typerating with the -100/300 that they failed to use the magnificently large EFIS screens to show decent synoptics pages (or even warnings/checklists) as well as provide auto-trim / yaw damping during power changes or even an autothrottle. That's the main drawback on an otherwise very capable airplane which is now past its teething problems.
Here's some info from "Flug Revue" on the time-to-climb records set by the Q400, among them 7'2" to 29500 feet....
Bombardier Aerospace announced that its new Q400 airliner established turboprop time-to-climb records in three flights from Davis Airfield in Muskogee, Oklahoma. The records have been submitted to the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale in Paris, France, for validation. The records cover time to three altitudes in three different weight categories. The Q400 climbed to 3,000, 6,000 and 9,000 metres (9,843, 19,685 and 29,527 feet) in each weight category, including one flight in the "unlimited weight" category to 9,000 m. The records claimed for flights to 9,000 m include: C1i weight class, 16,000 to 20,000 kg (35,274 to 44,092 pounds), seven minutes, two seconds, or 59 seconds faster than the eight minutes, one second established by the Saab 2000 in 1993. C1j weight class, 20,000 to 25,000 kg (44,092 to 55,115 pounds), eight minutes, 21 seconds, or three minutes, four seconds faster than the previous record of 11 minutes, 25 seconds held by the Grumman E2C Hawkeye military aircraft. C1k weight class, 25,000 to 35,000 kg (55,115 to 77,161 pounds), 11 minutes, 41 seconds. There was no current record in this category.