I can empathize with this decision. In the past me and KDE have never gotten along, but after using it side by side daily versus GNOME. I have come to the conclusion that it is better overall.

It has the best out of the box experience. The customization abilities are outstanding. Overall it is very clean and professional.

Even though speed wise I believe GNOME still has an edge when you install extensions like forge for automatic window tiling. It is more of a non-technical person's desktop environment. Where everything is very opinionated and not all that intuitive. Borderline on cumbersome. GNOME apps when compared to KDE apps feel unrefined and sometimes even clumsy.

I think both have their places in the real world. Where GNOME is more for the creative types, or people who want a kick ass media center to plug into their TV. If you are a professional who wants work done and have more reliability. Then KDE is the better option.

Since I am a bit of both. I use both. But my base desktop environment from now on will be KDE until further notice.