Sure, things are achievable to enhance and beautify XFCE. Still, generally speaking, XFCE is the least visually pleasing of the major destop environments (KDE Plasma, Gnome, Cinnamon, Budgie). Mate is a close second. Again, just my personal opinion.
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No, yeah, totally. âOut of the boxâ itâs not the prettier of the litter 
I dunno if LXQt still exist but I guess it makes the top too.
Well, regarding XFCE, the endeavourOS customization, back when it was the default DE on the ISO (is it still customized on the last ISO ?), has been more than enough for me.
And in terms of speed (and even just usability), I have the same sources than @flyingcakes, and in my humble experience, as soon as the hardware is pretty old (and, true, sometimes I do mean OLD) Iâve arrived at the same conclusions, XFCE (or LXQt) seems the very best candidates.
And even if not scientifically benchmarked other than by âTrustMeBro!â method) that doesnât seem suggestive.
Of course, each of the tried DE might have âevolvedâ since last âtestâ, and indeed, on ânewâ hardware, the distinction would probably need a real benchmark to be seenâŚ
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I like Xfce but I like KDE much more. 
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I hear ya. To each his own. Whatever works for you is best. The beauty of Linux is choice! 
There are four DEs I consider to be dated and visually unappealing out-of-the-boxâŚ
XFCE, LXDE, LXQT, and Mate.
All work well and are indeed fast. Particularly on older hardware. But the work need to get them to âlook goodâ or âlook modernâ isnât worth the time in my opinion for newer hardware. Especially when Cinnamon is quite light and fast and manages to look relatively modern out-of-the-box. Even KDE Plasma has become much faster and lighter over the years.
Same!
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I was forced to choose between stability and good looks. I just came from Plasma and it crashed in a big way. I dont know how but it took my steam saves in their cloud with it. Plasma boots much slower ( on my computer) and there were hesitations when clicking on icons.
Thatâs perfect to install on your Girlfriends Notebook to show your Love 
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I have no issues with any desktop on my hardware. Solid as a rock! 
Running both XFCE and Hyprland on my system. Hyprland comes in a little lighter but I think XFCE is just a bit âsnappierâ.
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Regarding Xfce, if you know what you want to achieve and how to do it, the whole beautifying action might take no longer than 30 minutes.
I also have experience with MATE - good desktop, but a huge P.I.T.A. to customise. Seems GNOME devs knew what they were doing back in the dayâŚ
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A rolling release Ubuntu appears interesting and worth a try. (Immutable distros seem a promising route, too.)
(It gets a little frustrating at times when applications only have .deb versions and I am on endeavourOS.)
this.
feels like sooooooooooooo many factors involved in quantifying âfastâ
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Iâm sat here laughing my arse off, who even cares about milliseconds? 
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Right on.
And there you go. 
(6 seconds for me, if I include autostarting 5 windows on 2 monitors.)
While beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, for me text on a screen is the most aesthetically pleasing desktop.
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Oooo tiling on demand. . . I like it.
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Donât forget, the XZ vulnerability was discovered because an engineer felt SSH was taking few extra milliseconds 
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