With Pro, you get access to BitLocker drive encryption. Any opinions yea / nay?
I work in IT (specifically I provision custom machines) and the government requires FIPS-compliant (aka the worst/slowest) BitLocker on our systems. We spec our equipment pretty well with at least a 7th gen i5 and an SSD, but BitLocker produces no noticeable performance hit on our new systems.
If you get granular, you will see that r/w speeds are definitely slowed, but that will not be noticed by your average user. Now, if you're working with an HDD as your main drive, I'm not sure how noticeable it would be.
When I go to encrypt a new system with a 1TB HDD, it's a set it and check on it tomorrow type deal. It takes quite a few hours to initially encrypt.
The 1TB SSDs are quicker, but I can't recall last time I did one.
Unless you're doing high-end gaming, or your computer is already slow as dirt, I see no reason not to enable it if you have sensitive data on your machine. It's just an extra layer of security.
Note that it is highly desired that your system has a TPM (Trusted Platform Module) to use BitLocker. Otherwise you need to futz with USB drives or passwords at boot to make it work.
Run TPM.msc to quickly check if you have a TPM. You may need to enable the TPM in the BIOS. Even if you don't have one, you can buy it and install it in most OEM systems.