If you want cutting edge, don’t use Mint. But that’s not their focus at all. Mint is for people who just want their computer to work with minimal hassle.
These don’t seem like competing needs. When I think “just work with minimal hassle”, I don’t think “I need to restrict myself to outdated hardware”.
I’m perfectly happy running old packages in general. I’m still on Plasma 5, and it works just as well as it did last year. But that’s a matter of features, not compatibility. Old is fine; broken is not.
If you need new drivers then Debian is not the easiest distro. I love Debian but I do occasionally consider distro-hopping again to get some complex things working (like ROCm).
I do think Debian is an excellent starting place, though. If it suits you, great! If not, you’ll have a better idea of what you need to look for going forward. Hopping distros isn’t the end of the world, after all.