"For specs, I'm considering 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD drive."
Personally, I would double these targets.

While Simon recommends AMD, I would stay out of the brand unless it's a gaming machine. Your requirements, even doubled, are a very "consumer" machine. In my experience home AMD computers for home use are not as stable as Intel. I agree, Thinkpad is the way to go.

If you are going with Intel, processors are usually represented like this: "i7-12700". Choose the one with the number after i7 that is 9000 or higher.