Upgrades are non-trivial as they'd have to be familiar with command-line and most would be perplexed by the many options.. I believe Gardua (built on arch) has a graphical upgrade manager though. op mentions Manjaro which is an arch distro. I use arch, it is meant for those who are willing to upgrade regularly and can handle when it fails.

Personally for n00bs I would go for Mint OS, Zorin or Elementary OS which all have graphical update/upgrade options and are very familiar to those who come from Wind0ze.