As others have said, you have to weigh the costs and benefits or find a middle ground that suits your life, your flock, and your particular situation.
For what it's worth, last year I let a group of 6 chicks free range during the day because they'd gotten used to it while with the broody hen that hatched them, and when she eventually went back to the flock, the chicks just would not stay in the run with her. By the end of fall, I'd lost 4 of them to predators. It's just so discouraging coming home and finding a clump of feathers and no sign of your favorite chick. And the last one that remained never really integrated well with the rest of the flock; he was picked on and even seemed a bit depressed for a little while after his last sister died.
The rest of the chicks from that year, I kept in a brooder at night and in a fenced run during the day. Once they were big enough, I integrated them with the rest of the flock, in a larger fenced run, and that seemed to work better. Out of 19, I only lost 1 or 2 to aerial predators when they were small. (I did lose several later in a single fox attack when they were nearly full-grown, when I was delayed getting home to put them in and it somehow got into the run, but that was a preventable freak occurrence.)
So for my chicks this year (which are still about 3 weeks old), I have portable fencing around an area that's got a lot of youngish trees, some large rocks, and a ton of brambles and low bushes. I figure the vegetation will help give them cover from hawks and owls until they're big enough to be less of a target. For the ground predators, we do get a fair amount of visits from foxes (or possibly just one fox), but they mostly happen in the fall. So my compromise for adult chickens is to keep them fenced in most of the day, and then let them out in the late afternoon so they can get an hour or two of free-ranging in before they go to sleep. In the fall, I start restricting that free-ranging time or even eliminating it if I think the foxes are starting to lurk.
The nice thing about this is that once the sun is fairly low in the sky, the chickens are less inclined to wander far from the coop. They tend to stick together and they return to the coop as it gets dark. We still get the occasional fox attack but by limiting their time to free range, I see fewer chickens wandering off on their own, or far from the coop, but they still get time to forage and explore. I also let them have a pretty large run, which I move a couple times a year to give the grass a chance to grow back, so they're not spending the rest of the day in a barren little dirt-cage; they're pretty comfy even if their territory is limited.
Good luck with your chicks, whatever you decide!
. Poor girl didn't lay an egg for 2 years. Luckily it had a gentle mouth.
