The Proverbial When to Format Windows Question

I have a ASUS K501UW-AB78 laptop, Intel Core i7-6500U 2.5GHz, M.2 SSD and 16 GB ram, I think it’s 3 maybe 4 years old. Lately it’s been really slow. It’ll start up fast but my mouse will drag on the screen, opening up programs is really slow and if I have several browser tabs open those will be slow. I don’t have any pop ups going on. My browser habits are very old guy boring. I always go to the same sites, nothing naughty lol, and I don’t download anything. If I do download things it’s always from the Microsoft Store or I go directly to the creators website like 7zip. As far as antivirus goes I’ve been rocking Windows Security for the past couple years before that I was using Kaspersky. I dropped Kaspersky because it just had a bunch of stuff I didn’t need, like password manager, child protections, VPN, and that sandbox browser that was horribly slow. I just felt like I was spending too much annually for it and for things I didn’t need and could get free with Windows Security.

Sooo, with all that said what’s the consensus on formatting to clean things up and make Windows run like brand new? I’m hesitant because I remember how much of a pain it was to constantly run Windows update over and over, then some times the update installations would hang and you’d just let it sit there for hours and then you have to make sure you have your particular hardware drivers just in case the Windows Update didn’t install the correct ones. I haven’t done a full blown format since Windows 7 and that was like 5 or 6 years on my old desktop Frankenstein computer lol. So I’m looking for feedback from that community about this. Especially with how frustrating Windows Update has been lately! Do you think I should format or maybe go through uninstall things that I haven’t used, or uninstall everything, maybe get a name brand antivirus I don’t? Looking forward to this geek project this weekend and any advice or tips you can give. Thanks!