I have an SSD for Windows and all Programs. The SSDs are really fast and so the machine boots runs the Norton Scan really quickly, seconds from Power up to useable. But SSDs, which are huge FLASH devices, will fail with repeated writes to a location, but in the last few years they have improved, which is why I use it for the OS & Programs (which reminds me I haven't made a USB bootable back-up FLASH Drive yet!). I would go for a Samsung or Intel SSD, and its a cheap option to improve your machine. My main PC is a Desktop so I have a Hard Drive for Data, plus the NAS RAID Drive, where all the data is backed up.
I use the Samsung 850 Pro's in both my laptop and "Big Computer" for Windows boot drives. They are super reliable and come with the Magician Software that will monitor the drive for failures. I have yet to have one of these things even get close to being over used. I think, like you said, that the early SSD's had this issue, but if you buy a quality SSD you should not have to worry about that.
I will say this, I will never go without an SSD boot drive again. I have even put them in shitty laptops for friends and it's made quite a big difference.
In fact, the big $20,000 HP DL380 Gen9 Servers that I use at work have SSD Mirror Arrays for their C: drives. Speaks volumes!