I used Plasma and GNOME for a month each, here are my impressions !

I used both desktop environments for about a month each, doing all the recording, video editing, publishing, and other type of stuff I do exclusively on KDE and GNOME, on the same machine.

What I use to make my videos:
Microphone: https://amzn.to/2PsNWXl
GPU: https://amzn.to/2LHZ5o5
Motherboard: https://amzn.to/2KZt63t
CPU: https://amzn.to/2IFjKrw

Both default setups are easily legible. Plasma looks like what you'd expect if you're coming from Windows, with its bottom panel, menu, and task manager, and the defaults are clean and simple, pretty welcoming for a new user.

GNOME, on the other hand, is the exact opposite approach: the default metaphor is the opposite of what you're used to, with no active task management, no desktop icons, no application menu, no dock or task bar. Activities are a good concept, easy to understand, but it goes against most other desktops I've used, so I took a while to get used to switching windows through the activities or the keyboard.

Configuration
Plasma has a plethora of options, plasmoids, layouts and panels, and as many configuration options as you want. You can tweak colors, themes, window borders and controls, and even the position of panels and toolbars on most applications, to get to the desktop and layout you want to use. You can't fault KDE on customization, it's the most configurable desktop environment I've ever used on any OS.

GNOME, by default, has almost zero configuration. You can, however tweak quite a few things through extensions and GNOME Tweaks, but these come with a convoluted installation process: look for GNOME Tweaks, install it, then install extensions, and the browser addon, and the host connector, then manage extensions through GNOME Tweaks, where you find their own set of preferences. I understand the logic of offering a very clean and simple default desktop, but enabling extensions in One click, with all the browser extensions and host connector configured, or providing an "extension store" directly from GNOME Software would be far easier, and would not clutter the interface whatsoever.

Look and Feel
The default look of KDE is pleasing, with bright icons, nice gradients and shadows, and smooth animations switching from a menu to another, dragging windows around, and generally while using the system. The default theme, Breeze, looks good on plasmoids and application widgets, and it offers a dark mode by default if you prefer that. Plasma looks modern, and polished, and it feels natural to use, with each element fading in and out.

GNOME, on the other hand, comes with Adwaita. It is a big theme: there is a lot of padding around buttons, menus, and everything looks quite big. Icons are a bit dated in my opinion, with muted colors. Adwaita is generally very gray and doesn't look very appealing to me,although it is very functionnal and legible, with nothing catching your eye specifically, letting you focus on your work.

Applications
As per applications, it's a tough one: GNOME seems to have a lot more applications available by default, compared to KDE, but GNOME apps are severely lacking in features.

KDE Plasma has very stable applications, but little choice: since most app does everything and is extremely configurable, there is little incentive to work on a new project instead of contributing to an existing one. Default applications can sometimes look dated, with out of place buttons or widgets and convoluted interfaces. They are powerful, though, and do not lack important features. Once you get familiar with a KDE application, you can pretty much do anything you like.

GNOME, on the other hand, has a nice choice of different applications, but they have issues. Photos is too simple, Music crashed a lot, and Contacts didn't support contact groups. One problem is desktop consistency: since GNOME does away with menubars, once you install something that does not strictly adhere to GNOME guidelines, it quickly looks out of place, and behaves differently.

Performance

In terms of performance, KDE Plasma has quick and smooth animations for panels and menus, and uses little RAM. Applications open quickly, and stay reactive, even under load. The desktop loads quickly, and does not seem to leak memory.

GNOME also behaves nicely by default, but it uses more RAM and CPU by default. This has been greatly improved on 3.30, but for lower specced systems, GNOME might not be the right choice. With a lot of opened applications, animations in the shell did tend to slow down, especially while accessing the "activities" view.

In the end, after one month spent with each desktop environment, I really couldn't say which one I prefer. I went back to my trusty elementary OS Juno for the time being, and I'm excited to keep covering the new features of GNOME and KDE. In termes of Look and feel, KDE matches my tastes more closely, but GNOME's interface and interface guidelines appeal to the minimalist in me.
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