Cloning or Syncing which is better

The computer these days have a lot of info on such subjects, unfortunately they are outdated...what was Free a year ago is not Free any longer and users should be warned about this before they proceed. As for my case, I would like to get my laptop win 10 version moved to my desktop's SSD drive. Some warn against imaging...some say to clone and I recall syncing my Firefox browser from one pc to another and wondered if this could be done with operating systems too. Like I said i was unfortunate to take advantage of the Ease free version or Macrium Free version when it was offered and now they are charging. . I've tried to install win 10 via Media creation tool, but found out later that it is very difficult to do so if one is trying to install to a SSD drive. It can be done, but mainly by cloning or something similar.