The tech industry’s relentless march toward labeling everything “plus”, “pro”, and “max” soldiers on, with Dell now taking the naming scheme to baffling new levels of confusion. The PC maker announced at CES 2025 that it’s cutting names like XPS, Inspiron, Latitude, Precision, and OptiPlex from its new laptops, desktops, and monitors and replacing them with three main product lines: Dell (yes, just Dell), Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max.
That yields new products like the freshly announced Dell Plus 32-inch 4K QD-OLED monitor and Dell Pro Premium laptops. In the future, it means we can also expect product names like Dell Pro Max Plus. Since a laptop like the Dell Pro Premium comes in two sizes, 13-inch and 14-inch, their proper full names are Dell Pro 13 Premium and Dell Pro 14 Premium. They’re spiritual successors to outgoing Dell Latitude laptops.
Dell’s XPS line, which has been a prominent name in premium laptops for years, is being replaced by new Dell Premium models. So they’re part of the base-tier Dell line, at the Premium sub-tier.
Antonio G. Di Benedetto
People have mocked this rebranding as too Apple-like, but honestly it’s much worse than that. Apple laptops (MacBook) at least have a brand distinct from the company name (Apple); throwing everything under Dell sounds generic and lazy. On top of that, you’re getting rid of a now-well-known name (XPS), which was associated with premium products.
Worst of all, adding three sub-tiers introduces a lot of confusion, arguably even more than the original naming scheme: does a ‘Dell Pro Base’ have better specs than a ‘Dell Premium’? Are they equivalent, or is the Premium model in a tier maybe better than the Base model of the next higher tier? If XPS now becomes Dell Premium, do the Plus and Base share the same design, only with lower specs? Also, having a tier called ‘Base’ sounds terrible; who wants to own a product with such a cheap-sounding name?! Maybe that was partially the reasoning behind this rebranding, to goad people into spending more for the Plus or Premium models.
Granted, I’m a bit irritated at Dell at the moment. My current personal laptop is a Dell model, which I purchased some two and a half years ago. Around New Years I somehow managed to crack its hinge on the left side such that the lid cannot close properly. I resorted to keeping the screen raised at all times now, even when I’m not using the laptop, to avoid damaging the hinge further, which could also crack the screen. The hinge itself looks to be made from plastic, which explains its fragility – I haven’t done anything different than countless other times when the hinge cracked – but is highly disappointing for its price. I had an Acer laptop before which lasted seven years without any hardware damage – it had a metal hinge. I doubt I’ll be buying laptops from Dell in the future.
Post a Comment