Intel's ‘Intel Processor’ to Replace Pentium, Celeron Brands for Laptops in 2023

Intel will decommission its legendary Celeron and Pentium brands used for basic notebook CPUs. Instead, starting in 2023, they will be referred to as the rather humble "Intel Processor" name. The move will allow the company to sharpen its focus on premium Core, Evo, and vPro brands and sell more premium CPUs. 

For now, Intel will continue to use Celeron and Pentium brands for desktop and embedded applications. When asked how this branding change would affect desktops, Intel told us, "Desktop has no new products in this segment slated for Q1 '23."

While the merge may clear up some confusion between various Pentium and Celeron-branded laptop offerings, it might also create some new puzzlements. 

Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

  • Colif
    My 1st PC had a Celeron 300mhz CPU in it.
    A part of history vanishes next year.
    Reply
  • ASCs
    When you are ashamed of your cheap line CPUs? :unsure:
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    ASCs said:
    When you are ashamed of your cheap line CPUs? :unsure:
    I believe it is the opposite issue: Celeron and Pentium still have too much legendary brand recognition, even the lobotomized models on the market today are still sufficient for most people buying them and Intel needs to disappear those legacy legendary brands to facilitate upselling people with lightweight compute needs into its modern higher-end brands they don't actually need.
    Reply
  • Giroro
    Intel might be thinking "A lot of people are using Chromebooks and starting to realize that those obsolete Celeron processors are terrible."
    "I know, let's rename our slightly-less-obsolete Celeron processors to something generic, so some people get confused into thinking they're buying a new product from higher in our lineup."

    But I think this will backfire. Now people will stop thinking "This Celeron processor is awful" and instead think "Intel processors are awful."
    Reply
  • The Historical Fidelity
    InvalidError said:
    I believe it is the opposite issue: Celeron and Pentium still have too much legendary brand recognition, even the lobotomized models on the market today are still sufficient for most people buying them and Intel needs to disappear those legacy legendary brands to facilitate upselling people with lightweight compute needs into its modern higher-end brands they don't actually need.
    Well Celeron has always been recognized as the barely adequate brand segment of Intel processors. I remember back in the day I had a net burst celeron and a net burst pentium 4 with the same clock frequency. The only difference was the celeron had disabled L3 cache and no SSE instruction support and the difference in performance was night and day. It was akin to switching from a 5400rpm hard disk drive to a gen 4 pci-e nvme ssd in 2022.
    Reply
  • steve4king
    The last time I went shopping for a laptop, I was frustrated by the imprecision of some labels that just said, "Intel Processor". I'd have to go to the mfg website and look up the laptop model to see what processor was included. Now that practice is being legitimized?

    Hopefully the part numbers clearly demonstrate a performance hierarchy.
    Reply
  • brandonjclark
    I don't like ANY of their names. They should keep it much more simple.
    Reply
  • SydB
    Colif said:
    My 1st PC had a Celeron 300mhz CPU in it.
    A part of history vanishes next year.

    Likewise, my first real PC had one too and I still have fond memories of it. A Celeron 300A, a seriously good piece of kit that clocked to 450Mhz with ease.
    Reply