It is my primary work driver as full time netsec engineer and part time developer. PoP just works and gets out of your way (which is mostly GNOME philosophy).
Having worked in various desktop environments and window managers, PoP let's me work without too much linux admin overhead.
I used to run Xfce on an older laptop a few years ago. One thing that made me feel more at home on Linux was changing the font to Lucida Grande (the default font in OS X for a long time).
If you are looking for a drop in replacement for macos elementary is definitely the way to go.