Hi,
If you have to choose between El Chalten and TDP for doing only day hikes, I'd go with El Chalten for certain. The scenery is at least as spectacular, and all the hikes start right at (one of) the edge(s) of town. They can be as short and easy or as long and strenuous as you want; personally I found myself pushing on for 7-9 hour hikes, doing big loops to really cover as much of the area as possible, and loving every minute of it.
If you can do both, I do think TDP can be worthwhile for just dayhikes, though there's a lot you'll be missing, including the French Valley, which imo was the very best bit. You could base yourself at either low-end starting point of the W - Refugio Paine Grande in the west, or Hosteria las Torres in the east, both of which can be reached by 'public' transport (bus into the park, then transfer from Laguna Amarga to Las Torres, or a boat to Paine Grande from the very end of the bus ride) - and basically walk a part of the two W-legs leading away from there. There's no other trails to follow, though, so it'd be dayhikes of "there and back again", with the only advantage over hiking the W itself that you could leave your heavy pack at the refugio, and just walk with a light daypack. The hiking in the west is a bit easier, and I think I liked the landscape there a bit better, plus you get to see Grey glacier, but in the east you'd actually get to see the Torres (doing the hike to their base), which can be rather spectacular (though it'd be a very long dayhike from Las Torres, with a pretty strenuous scramble going up the last bit).
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