I recently helped my mom get a laptop, and then I got one, too, and now I'm helping my sister get a laptop, and they all had the same type of requirements as you state. I suggested SSD for my mom and required it for myself, although my sister cares more about having more space than faster speed so I might just do a regular 1 TB drive.
I didn't want to take long to research so I just did Dell for my mom and myself. Not sure it was the best choice. I don't love mine, although I don't hate it either.
Surface Pro looks like it would be too small of a hard drive for the price point (the cheapest 256GB SSD is over $1K). Not sure that will work for my sister.