The days of Dell Inspiron, Latitude, Optiplex, XPS, and more are over as Dell has ditched the lot in favor of a vastly simplified new naming scheme. From now on, all its products will fall under just three main categories: Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max.
As a maker of some of the best gaming PCs and best gaming laptops around, Dell is one of the biggest names in PCs. However, its products have long had a confusing mass of product names. Its this legacy that the company is looking to shed, but while the new naming convention seems pleasingly simple and straightforward at first, the company has actually made this rather confusing in some ways, at least based on the reaction from media and other attendees of the company’s announcement.
The company unveiled the changes in coincidence with the CES trade show that’s taking place this week in Las Vegas. While the likes of AMD and Nvidia are gearing up to launch new GPU lines at the show, Dell has taken the opportunity to unveil a handful of new products but is mainly pushing the reveal of its new naming scheme.
The basic idea is that Dell will now become the baseline name for most standard products. Effectively it will replace entry level and consumer products such as might have fallen under the Inspiron desktop PC and laptop name. Then there will be Dell Pro products, which are those aimed at business users, so Latitude and Optiplex laptops and workstations might fall under this new name. Finally, there’s Dell Pro Max, which is for slightly-vaguely-defined maximum performance products.
So far mostly so good, except Dell has added an extra layer of complexity to the system that makes the logic less clear. Specifically, for each category, you’ll be able to get a base level model that will simply be called Dell or Dell Pro, for instance, but then there will also be Plus and Premium versions that up the build quality and premium feel. So you could have a Dell Premium that’s expensive and more premium feeling than a Dell Pro Plus or a Dell Pro Max.
Multiple journalists at the launch event asked Dell to further explain the categorisation but the company wasn’t entirely able to clarify the situation.
For instance, we asked how the hugely popular Dell XPS laptop lineup – one that’s traditionally been the company’s flagship for build quality and styling across all laptop sizes – would fit in the new scheme. Dell explained that the smaller 13-inch models would fall under the Dell Premium name, as they don’t have “max” performance, but the larger 14-16-inch models that have more powerful CPUs and discrete GPUs would fall under the Dell Pro Max Premium scheme, despite current larger XPS laptops not being marketed as for professional users as such.
Some examples of the new models include the above laptops that are the 14 and 16-inch versions of the new Dell Pro Max range. These are clearly business-focused machines but with Nvidia GPUs for max performance. Similarly, the below are the Dell Pro Max desktop range.
We also asked how Dell would actually differentiate between models given the very simplified model names and they clarified that, at least for laptops, each new product would have a seven-digit unique identifying code. The format of these is the first letter is the category, the second letter is the tier, the next two numbers are the screen size, then its two numbers for the production year, and then numbers denoting the “architecture”.
So you might have a PA14241, which would be a P for Pro, A for Premium, 14-inch laptop built in 2024 with architecture number 1. These numbers will be buried in most marketing for the machines but will be noted somewhere so users can drill down to exact models.
Adding one final dash of confusion, Dell isn’t ditching all of its existing product identifier names. For instance, Dell UltraSharp will still be used for certain categories of monitors, such in the new Dell UltraSharp 27 4K and Dell UltraSharp 32 4K. Meanwhile, other similar smart-looking business displays, such as the new Dell Plus 32 4K QD-OLED won’t use the UltraSharp name.
Thankfully, the Alienware sub-brand hasn’t been incorporated into this reshuffle so its product names stand completely alone. The company has announced a range of new products, though, including its stunning new Alienware AW2725Q 4K 27-inch QD-OLED gaming monitor and its easily upgradable new Alienware Area 51 desktop PC.
Ultimately, we’ll have to see how these new categories and this new naming scheme plays out as Dell releases more and more new devices. For an initial taste of what’s to come, though, check out the newly announced Dell UltraSharp 27 / 32 4k monitors that use a new type of LCD called IPS Black, which allows for a stunning 3,000:1 contrast.