I have no personal experience with these, but you can draw a number of conclusions by just reading about them.
I assume the free topo is the one by Maps4GPS.
https://www.gpsfiledepot.com/maps/view/126/His work is very good and his goal was to make maps of as many places as possible so you will find a lot of his work here. This map is 6 years old and unfortunately suffers from the same major bug as most of his maps. Unless you know the "trick", it won't display on your computer due to an issue with the installer he used. The fix is easy and he mentions it in the info, but it has caused countless posts in these forums from confused new users.
Is this the wilderness map?
https://www.gpsfiledepot.com/maps/view/458/That is not a topo map - it's not even a full map. It's a transparent overlay that contains selected features. It is useless unless you already have another topo map of Kentucky. And this kind of map is basically useless on your computer. Garmin's software can only display one map at a time on the computer, so you will see almost nothing with this map. On your gps, you can enable two maps at the same time, which is the way this map is intended to be used.
Popej's map contains current OSM data.
https://www.gpsfiledepot.com/maps/view/764/So you should be able to look at the map on the OSM website and get a good idea of what it's like. This map is also routable, meaning that it can give you turn by turn directions to a destination. There are very few maps like this at GPSFileDepot.
Is this the commercial map?
https://www.gpsfiledepot.com/maps/view/747/This is an expensive product that seems mostly focussed on annual subscriptions for a smartphone app, but also appears to offer Garmin compatible maps for around $120/state. You'd have to decide whether that is a good deal, Garmin's own maps are cheaper than that. They are intended for hunters and not hikers. IMO, the blatant commercial tone seems out of place here at GPSFileDepot, which they are using for free advertising.
There are also some other free GPSFileDepot maps that are worth looking at. I know you want a simple answer, but there just isn't a "one size fits all". You will need to do your "due diligence" if you want the best maps for your purpose.
I have never seen Popej's US maps, but they are worth a look since he covers the whole US, uses current OSM data and they should also be seamless. You will likely have problems at the overlapping boundaries of maps from different authors.