Since my trusted old Acer 5220 has somehow been giving me occasional droputs during recording (even with an SSD, using a Fireface UFX), and I thought something with a bit more horsepower could be useful eventually, I bought a new laptop this summer, having just come across it a a shop and after comparing/trying it a bit there. So far, I have not regretted this spontaneous decision...

It's an Acer again (No, they are not paying me...), a Swift 3, of which there are a large number of varieties with different screen sizes (even 4K), CPUs (AMD and Intel), RAM, VGA, and storage configurations. Mine is the SF314-54-55SF, which does not seem to be available any more in this exact configuration.
(Intel Core i5-8250U, 8GB RAM, Intel 620 graphics, with a 128 GB SSD and a 1TB HDD. It's got one USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports, plus one USB-C. No optical drive or LAN port). There are various similar configurations, though, and I assume that they will perform similarly well... The laptop comes with a very solid aluminium chassis, which is a definite plus. It seems to be quite easy to open the case, i.e. to replace/upgrade a disk drive, which I plan to do.

Multichannel recording with Digiface USB/AVB or various Madifaces etc. works reliably even for many hours, and I can load e.g. Samplitude projects with lots of effects at low latencies before getting dropouts... Have not tested real-world use of VST instruments or the like much, since I will mostly use it for recording, but I don't doubt it will work well. The laptop is usually almost silent, and even if the fan does turn on, it does not become a nuisance at all (it could easily be in the same room for most acoustic recording purposes), even though there is enough CPU power for video rendering as well. 4K video editing is possible, though not totally smooth...