Laptop Recommendations - Advice/Help Needed Please (Budget $2k-ish)

Hi guys, I have not bought a laptop in years. In fact I'm still using a Dell Inspiron which I bought in 2013. It runs on the i7-3632QM processor. Over the past few months the laptop will heat up and then auto-shutdown. So I've decided it's finally time to buy a new laptop. Except I am totally confused what to buy so I hope someone can give me advice.

What I use my laptop for:
- Standard web browsing
- Watching movies
- Word/Excel (nothing overly intensive)
- I also store a large collection of photos on my laptop (currently circa 220GB), and then back up the photos on an external HDD. The photos are precious so do not want to lose them, so I have them saved in 2 places i.e. on the laptop and external HDD.
- I do not do any photo/video processing.
- I do not do gaming, except play Football Manager every now and then.

The other thing with my current Dell Inspiron is it's bulky and has always had a poor battery life.

What I can't really decide on:
- Screen size: 13-14" or 15" (FHD more than sufficient for me): have always preferred the 15" screen for screen real estate but this obviously comes at a cost.
- 256GB or 512GB SDD HDD: given the photo collection I mentioned above, would prefer the 512GB but it looks like there is a material price premium for this.
- i5 or i7: i5 might be sufficient for me but is it worth getting i7 to "future proof" a bit.
- 8GB or 16GB RAM: based on my research looks like 16GB is a safer better these days.
- Dedicated vs integrated GPU: think integrated GPU should be fine for me. Football Manager is not intensive.

Add-ons:
Would ideally like the new laptop to have
- a HDMI port
- USB-A slot (at least 1) given I still have USB sticks and my external HDD
- USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 slots
- Full SD card slot to easily transfer photos from my DSRL to laptop.

The new laptop needs:
- to be relatively light weight (definitely not >2kg like my existing Dell Inspiron),
- have a good battery life

Some background:
When I initially purchased my Dell Inspiron I had a lot of hardware issues with the laptop. At one point I had to send the laptop back to Dell. When Dell received the laptop the screen was damaged (even though I packed it in packaging they provided), and they wanted me to then pay for the cost of repairs to the screen. This left a bad test for me. So I would prefer to buy a laptop in a retail store in person, so if ever there was a problem I can go hand it to them in person.

Upon doing my research the laptop which jumps on to me is the Dell XPS (with 15" FHD, i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD HDD). But I've also read about the QC issues and it is quite expensive (not to mention my past experience with Dell)!

So I hope people can see my dilemma, and I really hope people can offer there views and opinions and recommend some laptops (around 2k preferably)?

Many thanks!