I used to distrohop in the past. It's nice to have a USB stick from which multiple distros can be booted. I used YUMI by flashing on a 16 Gb USB stick. After that it's a simple case of downloading your .iso of choice, clicking and dragging it into the YUMI drive.

There was a Ventoy craze in the middle. I have never used it, so I cannot attest to its experience.

What I generally check in a distro:

1. The programs that come built with the distro. Over a period of time, I stick to one distribution (say, Linux Mint), but install the software that I like from another distro (Say the Clipboard application from MXLinux).
2. How quickly the distro installs.
3. The software version in the distros repository. For example, MXLinux repos tends to be more up to date compared to Mint.
4. How the distro customises the Desktop environment. Example, the way cinnamon and XFCE are customised in Mint and MXLinux respectively is very different from the base install of these DEs. That quality of life addition can really change your opinion on using the distro as a whole if you are a newcomer.