Does a good domain name help you rank better considering all things are equal?

There are premium domains out there selling for 20-30k. Do they help you rank faster in the search engine if the name is related to your niche? Like one word domain names that are directly related to your niche? Do they give you an advantage over a non premium domain considered all other things are equal(content,seo) etc.

My friend is telling me that with googles latest updates domain names dont matter anymore and everything is about SEO. Apparently companies only purchase good domain names for prestige purposes now and not for search engine ranking.

I assume your friend means that EMD's don't do much difference to ranking anymore, which is true. I seem to remember shorter url's having a little edge over longer ones though. But it is only small margins, a niche related url is good enough. The premium ones are for branding and other "we have too much money to spend on domains"-activities.