Most suitable OS for MBP Early 2011 13”?

I have a MBP Early 2011 13-inch with the following specifications: - i7 2620M 2.7 GHz (Dual Core / Sandy Bridge) - HD Graphics 3000 512 MB - 16 GB RAM - SSD

I tried Ventura because I saw others have good performance but this is not true on mine. The last macOS that runs “smooth” is Big Sur… So what?