ThinkPad

I think it is much better. I didn't enjoy using Mint when I tried it out, but that was a few years ago. The Pop! Software Center works really well and allows you to manage all of your installed software from a central location. You can install most things that you'd need (including Steam) from there and keep everything up to date. They also have a unique grid layout for your display that you can either use or turn off. It's kind of difficult to explain, but it's basically auto-tiling of your open windows. I chose to turn it off, but some people love it.

Since Pop is built from Ubuntu you get a huge community for support and a large software library, but they've decoupled it enough from Ubuntu that it doesn't have the tracking that Ubuntu has. Communication with 3rd parties is disabled by default and only enabled through intentional user action. They also have a bunch of custom keybinds that make it really easy to control your system if you're into that sort of thing. They have a live image available, so you can put it on a CD or thumb drive and check it out without installing it. I think the live image uses the Gnome desktop environment, but you can always change that after booting up and logging in. Also their installer is probably the easiest of all the distros.

Check it out. You may love it. I've been using it as my primary desktop for about 3 years now and haven't had any problems. My favorite distro is Arch, but that is very much active, old-school computing, so I keep it on a laptop, and use Pop on my main desktop gaming computer. Oh about gaming, they have a version that installs Nvidia drivers by default, saving you from having do deal with that yourself. That version even has automatic updates and rollbacks for the drivers.

Pop_OS! gives you benefits. It encrypts your storage drive by default with 1 password including login (which is rare in Linux) and the Pop Store for software install&updates is fairly better.

Besides for those, they're pretty much equal and both uses xorg so far.

You can just format your usb stick with Ventoy2Disk and try Pop_OS! (or any Linux distro) in live mode without formatting or installing anything on your computer. With Ventoy, you just delete the .iso and drag new ones without re-formatting.