DNS / domain based blockers are entirely too coarse in my experience. There are plenty of cases where an ad or a tracking script comes from the exact same domain as real content. A real ad blocking extension can match only parts of the URL, or block certain file types, etc. Ad blocking extensions can also do CSS to clean up the page after blocking the ad, or "display: none" ads that for some reason can't be blocked any other way.
My fear is something like pihole may end up being a temporary stopgap; it can only help with DNS queries that go through it, and so it too may end up in the same position as chrome + ublock origin. For instance, if chrome decides to use a trr or dns-over-https and removes options to change it.
True, but at that point you can elect to stop using Chrome altogether. #firefoxGang
Sub-optimal for laptop users who might connect to various networks (home, office, the coffee shop) throughout a single day.
Depending on how powerful your laptop is, you could always install a lightweight version of Linux using Hyper V (assuming you're running Windows), and install a pihole server in that. It might be a bit of a pain changing the dns settings for every network, but maybe someone else knows a way to make that easier.