On the point of Testing lacking timely security updates, it's fair. But I invite you to compare the timelines with other distributions (including from corporate backers), and you will realize that their manual testing takes even more time.
Plus, you always have Debian Unstable. And apt-listchanges and apt-listbugs work fine in Unstable. It's the same experience: you get notified of serious bugs before upgrading, you get to pin packages and the pins are automatically lifted with the fixed version.