Dell roasted at CES for adopting Apple-like device names
Dell rebranded all of its PCs at CES 2025, and while it might ultimately be more simple to understand in the long run, everyone seemed to immediately notice some similarities to Apple's approach.
Rather than going by nonsense names like "XPS" and "Inspiron," every Dell machine will now be separated into three categories: Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max. This is, of course, very similar to Apple's approach to naming its devices. Per Bloomberg (via 9to5mac), people in the audience at Dell's CES press conference noted it verbally.
“I am wondering why you guys didn’t choose something original, because you essentially have Apple’s branding here,” someone in the audience reportedly said.
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That reaction was echoed online:
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A Dell spokesperson explained the company's position to Mashable:
“Our new simplified portfolio focuses on our company brand and uses descriptive industry words for categories and tiers. These descriptive words are industry words. For example, Pro was an industry term long before Apple started using it. Pro has been used by Microsoft with Windows, AMD with Ryzen, Intel with vPro. When we use Pro, it will consistently mean professional-grade productivity. That consistency isn’t always there from our competitors, where Pro can mean different things on different products. We will make this clear throughout the customer purchasing/researching experience.”
Dell isn't wrong that Apple didn't invent the word "Pro," nor is it wrong that the new approach is simpler than the old one. However, it should be noted that within those three categories are more sub-categories (Base, Plus, and Premium) that can really get confusing. For example, you can have a Dell Premium, Dell Pro Base, or Dell Pro Max Plus, and it's not necessarily intuitive to figure out which of those is going to be the best one for you by name alone.
Perhaps within a few years we'll all get used to it. But for now, Dell is going to be the butt of some jokes, whether it likes it or not.
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Alex Perry is a tech reporter at Mashable who primarily covers video games and consumer tech. Alex has spent most of the last decade reviewing games, smartphones, headphones, and laptops, and he doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon. He is also a Pisces, a cat lover, and a Kansas City sports fan. Alex can be found on Bluesky at yelix.bsky.social.
