I use Garuda, haven’t really had any issues with it so far. This is on a relatively high-spec desktop though, so can’t speak with confidence of laptop performance. It is arch based with a light install, and you can easily install/uninstall many popular packages by checking them on/off on a selection screen, so I’d imagine it’d still be good performance.
Only issue I’ve had was the time it became unbootable after I tried to change the system font so, uh, I recommend avoiding that.