I have tried out Gnome, KDE, Lxqt and Xfce on a regular desktop and all of them feel nice. I haven’t tried many DE’s on a laptop.
Are there any particular DE’s you like on a laptop, because of things like power consumption and efficiency that would not come normally into consideration for a desktop?
Like you I never latched onto tiling wm’s. I did think they were fun to play with but unless they use Emacs keybindings I don’t think my brain will like learning a whole set of new ones.
I love virtual desktops however. Used them from the start!