Linux

GNOME

KDE

If there was a modern Window Maker, I would use that. I mean with a notification area and when I minimize Firefox or Chrome I don't get five icons in the corner and it works as a Wayland compositor and supports HiDPI scaling.

If you haven't tried them, I recommend giving them a try. They all have something to offer.

I don't use Gnome, for example. People knock on it a bit BUT a large group of people swear by it for workflow.

KDE Plasma is the dream for anyone who likes to tweak settings. I used it on my laptop for a long time and it is very convenient. It also manages power and monitor settings very well. In terms of memory usage it is now similar to XFCE.

XFCE is perfect for people who don't like change. It is a slow moving DE; tried and true.

Right now I am using LXQt. Not sure why I decided to do that. It looks ok. It is fast and light. That's it's claim to fame. It can be used with different WMs which is nice.

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?

I can't say I've ever looked into it. But, I found that KDE handled things very well. I used my laptop for full workdays, getting 11 hours out of it.

I'm a KDE guy and use it myself on my notebook, but GNOME with its multitouch gestures and polished (if a little inflexible) workflow is also an excellent fit.

xfce since it came default with eos and its pretty lightweight

I3 and KDE

I like Enlightenment. It uses 400 MB of RAM on my old laptop/

Tiling window managers like i3 are imho nice for laptops, since they do not waste any space and can be easily controllen via keyboard. Takes a while to get used to them, however.

i3 and never looked back!

KDE customize to how ever you like to use it!

sway, the i3 clone for Wayland. I'm really happy with it, even on my Intel iGPU + Nvidia GPU laptop.

XFCE minimal but good looking. You could also go for MATE or Cinnamon..

I haven't tried Gnome since they trashed the UI ;) and I wasn't ever much of a KDE fan so the only desktop I have ever used since the demise of Gnome 2 is XFCE.

However I've switched back to Window Maker (a window manager) on my main PC and on my VM's and I may do so on my laptops too. I don't really need a desktop so to speak, I just use wmsystray to add a system tray and things like NetworkManager, bluez etc all end up there giving me what I actually do use of a desktop.

Tried many, but Xfce won for me:

• great keyboard support (tiling windows, virtual desktops, etc.)
• doesn't get in the way
• compact re UI (don't like modern GNOME look with lots of whitespace)
• lightweight

And even though I use terminals a lot (neovim, git, etc.), I never stuck with tiling window managers in the end (e.g. i3). Rather I'm heavily relying on:

• virtual desktops (8 or so)
• manual window tiling via shortcuts
• tmux

Gnome hands down has the best laptop experience. If you follow the intended workflow of using tiled windows and many workspaces. You can get to a very large number of windows, without getting lost, even with just the laptop screen.

Additionally the paradigm does translate well to a desktop for the times you are docked.

Of the ones I tried, my top 3 would be cinnamon, budgie, and kde. KDE is probably the best bet for modern features ATM, cinnamon for simplicity.

Cinnamon for me, It looks like old Windows

xfce. Lightweight, stays out of my way, and doesn’t eat up much screen real estate.

XFCE is my favourite on both desktop and laptop. It's light weight, has all the features I need and feels really snappy, especially when all animations are turned off (which I always do).

i3
the less I need a mouse on a laptop, the better

edit: ok, you specifically asked for a full fledged DE and not just a WM. well, I picked what I needed and with Manjaro i3 as base, I had a nice place to start