The Linux desktop experience is sufficiently hardware-dependent to make single-sample distro comparisons useless.

As a counter-example, I recently installed Manjaro (Arch-based) over Pop OS because Pop was slow and buggy on my relatively high-end system.

Aggregate data can at least give a sense of how likely a given distro is to provide a smooth experience:

https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity

I always loved arch for its minimalistic approach. Well, maybe this is not entirely true since when we was pretty much forced to switch to systemd :) but it is still my favourite distro, even after those sleepless nights. I am maybe a weirdo but I don't regret a minute spent fixing my installation :)