Good advice in the last couple posts. I would also add the Lenovo X series if you value portability over giant screen. Go with Lenovo Thinkpad T, P or X series. These are all pro laptops.

Personally, I prefer portability and have used the X series for many years, but I travel quite a bit and am (was) on planes often.

X - Ultra portable, smaller, lighter
T - Mid size (and probably lowest cost)
P - Workstation in a laptop. Large displays

They all perform very well. I run AutoCAD, Photoshop, and just about everything else well on my X series.

Yes, SSD for sure. If you are like me and use cloud storage quite a bit, you can go with a 256 or 512 SSD. 16G of RAM.