Again, it's subjective. The last time I used KDE it felt hacked together and inconsistent, and I got exactly the opposite impression of GTK and GNOME. I thought KDE4 was good but KDE5 looking like a knockoff Windows complete with context menu hell just isn't for me. It's much more developed now, but in my own testing I find a lot more inconsistency from KDE and Qt stylings in general, and I prefer to not have to touch my machine once it's setup and I really find GNOME's workflow to be best for me.
KDE is not less consistent, it's just more configurable. Sorry, actually configurable. Gnome basically says "Do it our way or not at all... okay maybe you can change some colours if you must", which is much more of a Windows (and especially MacOS) attitude than KDE. The default layout of kde is bit more windows like (but less rubbish) but far more configurable. As to hacked together... have you seen gnome's file dialogues???
This is the endless argument, though. I like the way GNOME works by default, so the configurability is irrelevant. Some people want configurability, which is fair, but after 9 years I just don't care anymore.
That's an understatement 😄
The amount of configuration KDE offers is mindbogglingly to me.
Again, UX and degree of configuration are very subjective matters.
I feel the same. I like the minimal design oft GNOME and KDE plasma looks kind of too much like windows, which feels traumatic to me :D
But I will try plasma again soon with mint. I hope it will be more pleasant than I remember
KDE works out of the box but can be customised, unlike gnome, which if it's not how you want to use it does not work out of the box and there's nothing you can do about it