conio.h is:

->Nonstandard (used in the older MS-DOS days for keyboard input)

->Windows-specific (so womp womp if you're using Linux or MacOS)

->Very laggy (I built a game with conio.h--most laggy thing on earth--the _getch() call is probably the culprit, but the system("cls") is also pretty slow.)

So in general, just use ncurses, but if you're lucky enough to be able to use conio.h, use it to start. ncurses is still probably better though, even though I haven't used ncurses personally.