At a New York event headlined by founder Michael Dell, Dell announced a dramatic rethink of its laptop sub-brands. It is ditching well-known and long-running options like XPS, Inspiron, and Optiplex for a three-tiered system that it’s hard to not directly compare to Apple. Going forward, Dell’s new consumer PCs will be known simply as Dell, while business-focused models will get the Dell Pro moniker, and high-performance workstation-class systems will be labeled Dell Pro Max. Its gaming-focused Alienware brand is exempt from this renaming scheme.
The company looks at this as a simplification (rival HP did something similar under the Omni brand last year), with internal research indicating buyers only really care about the Dell name. But there will, of course, have to be numbers to indicate screen size, and there are three tiers (Base, Plus, Premium) to indicate the level of features. For convertibles, there will be a 2-in-1 label to denote a 360-degree hinge. And the company is expanding its AMD and Qualcomm offerings, while continuing to offer Intel Lunar Lake. So, it’s unclear how exactly this will simplify the company’s naming scheme.
Examples in the press materials provided include a consumer-focused 16-inch convertible featuring a Lunar Lake chip with the Dell 16 Plus 2-in-1 name and a DB06250 model name. A 14-inch workstation with an Intel Core Ultra 9 processor and Nvidia Pro RTX 2000-series graphics was labeled as Dell Pro Max 14. The latter had no provided model name, but you can be sure that, with many models offering multiple Qualcomm, AMD, and Intel CPUs, full model and configuration names will still be complex.
Gamers have dodged the revamp, so Alienware’s Aurora brand and others will endure.
To be fair to Dell, I am sure the XPS brand is more iconic to the tech journalism world (and Latitude and Precision are far more recognizable to the IT crowd) than to the average consumer. But I would not be surprised to see the company re-launch some of its classic brands to much fanfare within three or four years. You heard the rumor here first: Dell announces a sub-two-pound XPS 14 at CES 2029!
Dell 14 Plus
The Dell 14 plus is one of the first laptops launching under the company’s new naming scheme, which we got some brief hands-on time with at Dell’s event.
It will be offered with Intel’s Lunar Lake CPUs, from a Core Ultra 5 226V, up to an Ultra 9 288V, 16 or 32GB of RAM, with either a 1920x1200 display or a 2560x1600 display. The latter is listed as IPS. As this is the mid-range consumer tier, don’t expect the best in ultra-portability. The laptop is 0.67 inches thick and has a listed starting weight of 3.42 pounds.
Dell 15 Plus 2-in-1
A larger Dell 16 Plus 2-in-1 was also shown off with an eye-catching 600-nit Mini-LED touchscreen with a 90 Hz refresh rate. It offers the same CPU and RAM options as the Dell 14 Plus, but is available in the silvery “ice blue” of the 14 Plus and a darker “midnight blue.”
The screen on the 16 Plus looked great in our brief time with it, but otherwise nothing particular stands out about the design of these devices. Then again, that’s true of most mid-range consumer laptops made by Dell or anyone else.
