Dell Revamps Its 2025 Laptop Lineup With New Streamlined Branding For CES

Branding efforts are tricky business. Choose an obtuse name and it can be tricky to know what you're even selling. Of course, Dell's branding hasn't fallen into that category, but names like Latitude and Inspiron can be tough to decipher if you're new to PCs. That's why the largest privately-owned PC manufacturer, Dell, not only announced a truckload of new AI PCs at CES, it also rolled out a new series of brands to simplify its product lineup and help consumers understand what they're buying. Meet Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Max.

Before we dive too deeply into the names, we want to point out there are lots of PCs coming very soon under these three umbrellas. The first wave of machines are mostly laptops with names that indicate screen sizes. As we go, we'll see things like Dell Pro 13 Premium and Dell 16 Plus, and it will all make sense after understanding the new branding. While the first wave of AI PCs were Snapdragon X1 Elite-based notebooks, these are for the most part x86 notebooks using Lunar Lake CPUs from Intel's Core Ultra 200 series. 

Understanding Dell's New Branding

At first it might appear that Dell has taken iPhone names and applied them to PCs, but it's not quite that simple as there are suffixes that can be applied to each. It's basically three categories of device: Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max. Within each category, suffixes indicate things like build quality and performance tiers. First is the non-suffixed name, which is the base model, and then the Plus is a step-up and Premium is pretty self-explanatory. Understanding it as a 3x3 grid helped this author wrap his brain around it. All the same, a name like Dell Pro Max 16 Premium doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

The Dell branding will encompass everything that targets individual consumers -- fare thee well, Inspiron, Inspiron Plus, and XPS brands. These names have served the company well. However, in 2025 they've been replaced with Dell base models and their suffixed brethren:  Dell Plus and Dell Premium.


That means folks shopping on Amazon or at Best Buy for a home computer are going to see three brands, just like they have in the past. The names should also be clearer; it's obvious that Dell Plus is better than Dell, while Dell Premium sits on top. And it should be noted that Dell's gaming brand Alienware isn't going anywhere, either. New models in Alienware's lineup were just announced, as a matter of fact. 

After that are the models targeted at corporate buyers. Dell Pro more-or-less replaces the Latitude brand of business notebooks and desktops. Meanwhile, the high-performance Precision lineup has been dubbed Dell Pro Max. And of course those brands all have their own base, Plus, and Premium branding applied to them. Pretty straightforward, right? Right, so let's move on to the systems themselves. 

The Dell Pro and Pro Max Lineups

The first machines to roll out under the new branding are, for the most part, Dell Pro and Pro Max PCs. We'll start with the Dell Pro 13 Premium and 14 Premium. As their names imply, they ship with 13 and 14-inch displays with 16:10 aspect ratios and either FHD+ or QHD+ resolutions. Later this year, these notebooks will be available with Tandem OLED displays (first seen on the M4 iPad Pro) for a 24% increase in efficiency and a 49% weight reduction compared to previous OLED designs. The early models will instead come with mini-LED backlit IPS displays. 


The Dell Pro Premium notebooks are also built upon 90% recycled magnesium frames that keep the weight down to as low as 2.36 pounds. Despite the light weight, these systems meet the MIL-STD H durability spec so they can survive long days in the airport or driving around. These notebooks also have dual-fan cooling systems that the company says keeps them quiet while increasing air flow by 20%. Dell Pro Premium cooling systems will be riding atop Intel Core Ultra 200v-series processors.

Dell Pro AI Studio

The same Lunar Lake CPUs which have on-board NPUs that enable Copilot+ features in Windows will also drive Dell Pro AI Studio. This would be easy to dismiss as the company's own take on on-device AI, but it's actually quite a bit more. Dell Pro AI Studio goes a lot farther than just configuring some settings for different workloads, though; Dell Pro AI Studio has its own collection of validated models that have been optimized for the hardware of a Dell Pro PC that can be easily deployed on-device using the Dell Management Portal. This video presentation from Dell goes into much more detail.


Of course, all of these features can be done through public repositories like HuggingFace or downloading random repos from different hardware makers on GitHub. However, having all of this collected and (more importantly) validated by the OEM makes getting a useful AI model onto a PC a breeze. This lets Dell Pro users focus on getting work done rather than setting up an environment. 

The Dell 14 and 16 Plus

Consumer PCs aren't left out of the initial launch of Dell's rebranding efforts. The Dell 14 Plus and 16 Plus will be available as both traditional notebooks and 2-in-1 designs. To start with, these systems will have Intel Core Ultra 200v processors that increase battery life 39% over the previous generation of Inspiron Plus notebooks. 


Later this year, Dell says it will flesh out the consumer offerings to include desktops and notebooks. There will be options based on not only Intel Core CPUs, but also AMD Ryzen and Qualcomm Snapdragon X series processors as well. As these machines launch and Dell continues with its rebranding efforts, we'll be sure to bring more. For now, you can see more about Dell Pro computers directly from Dell itself.