Earlier this year at CES, Dell Technologies announced a major rebranding or “brand unification” across its PC range. This was confirmed for the local market yesterday at the first Dell Tech Rally of 2025.
That means no more XPS, Inspiron, or Latitude models. Going forward, there will only be ‘Dell’. That doesn’t mean everything about the former models is falling away. Most of the good bits will remain, they’ll just have new names.
There’s a new Dell in town
Dell has divided its portfolio into three categories, each with three performance tiers. As illustrated above, the three categories are Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max.
Devices in the standard ‘Dell’ category incorporate products formerly labelled as Inspiron, XPS, and Vostro and are aimed at most regular folks. The ‘Dell Pro’ category is where you’ll find devices that are used to sport Latitude or OptiPlex labels and are meant for users with higher performance needs, whereas Dell Pro Max is where Precision products have moved to and will boast the highest performance specs.
“Dell PCs are designed to excel in every aspect of life – whether you’re playing, learning or working – while the new Dell Pro laptop portfolio brings a fresh, clean and timeless look for the business professional,” said Morne Kroukamp, field product marketing manager of Dell Technologies South Africa.
It’s a bold strategy, let’s see if it pays off
Then, within each category are three performance tiers or sub-categories. Base is exactly what the tag implies, no frills or extras. Plus takes things up a notch with a few extras, like an upgraded display, more RAM, or a faster CPU. Premium signifies the top-end model for the tier and will, presumably, sport maxed-out specs (or as close as it can get without encroaching on the next tier).
This brand refresh ultimately means there are now nine possible labels for Dell desktops and laptops, from the simple ‘Dell 16’ up to the Dell Pro Max 16 Premium (these aren’t real products, just examples of what to potentially expect).
However, from what has Dell shown off so far, it doesn’t appear to have filled out all the ranks just yet so we might not see a ‘Dell Pro Max 16 Premium’ after all.
On top of the nine new possible labels, Dell shared that it will also offer options for all three major silicon vendors across its product stack. To confuse things even further, Dell will continue to sell devices with the old labels until stock runs out and the new branding fully takes effect.
If this is all a bit much to wrap your head around, you’re not alone. Rest assured we’ll make it abundantly obvious which model we’re talking about going forward.
