Dell Rebrands Its Products, Loses None of Its Unique ‘Dell’ Charm ⇥ theverge.com

Antonio G. Di Benedetto, the Verge:

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.

If you think that sounds a bit Apple-y and bland, you’re right. But Dell is taking it further by also adding a bit of auto industry parlance with three sub-tiers: Base, Plus, and Premium.

Di Benedetto knocks Dell for “stripping itself of some of its identity” but I disagree: this is exactly what I expect to see from Dell’s naming conventions. I attempted to configure a model of its new Dell Pro Premium laptop. Upon selecting a brighter and nicer display, I received an error message reading “Composite Rule Error: Invalid selection in Processor Branding”. Upon closing the error and returning to the configurator, I was told:

The Chassis Option requires the matching Memory size. The 16gb Memory is only available with the Ultra 5 236V/226V and Ultra 7 266V. The 32gb Memory is only available with the Ultra 5 238V and Ultra 7 268V.

This is almost nostalgic for me. Before I owned a Mac, I recall trying to shop Dell’s website and encountering gibberish like this all the time. That is the Dell charm I so vividly remember, no matter what combination of “premium”, “pro”, “max”, and “plus” they use.