How do they come up with the most confusing naming schemes on the planet? You would think that making it easy to identify which product is which would boost sales, or someone at least has the sanity to make it easy to understand.
(i.e. CPUs, laptop processors, USB standard, most smartphones, monitors, anything made by Sony that’s not a Playstation…)
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What does the “H” and “U” stand for in intel processors? For Ryzen processors, why is the “7” repeated in “Ryzen 7 9700X”?
A logical person would think that 5Gbps would be USB 3.0, 10Gbps would be 3.1, 20Gbps would be 3.2, etc. But for some reason, some idiot decided it would be a good idea to have USB 3.0/3.1 Gen 1/3.2 Gen 1 as 5Gbps, USB 3.1 Gen 2/3.2 Gen 2 as 10Gbps, and appending “2x2” to the latter for 20Gbps. And USB4 is a mess, you’ve got 20Gbps (then what’s the point of 2x2) and 40Gbps (but there’s no consistent indicator whether it’s 20 or 40Gbps, not even their stupid “x.1 Gen 1” and “x.2 Gen 2” convention).
What is professional about “Pro” phones? Let’s see, usually they have an extra telephoto camera, and maybe a larger battery, but neither of those are professional features. It’s not professional anything!
Sony is weird. WH-1000XM5 is a mouthful, the “WH” stands for wireless headphones, which makes sense I guess, but why is it “1000”? I guess that goes with your other headphones, the WH-CH700N and WH-C500. But wait a minute, why is there a “CH” in front of the cheaper models? Hang on, the 500 model is a “C” instead, it’s not even consistent! Why does the 1000 end with an X, the 700 with an N (noise-cancelling? but the 1000 also has that), and the 500 with nothing. Then there’s the “M5”. It’s not a Roman numeral like their phones and cameras, and the “M” seems redundant. Also, the cheaper headphones’ newer models are 710N and 510, with no “M2” or anything like that. WHY???
And why is it that Sony’s cameras go up in number as you get more features/more expensive? You’ve got the a6000 (why the superfluous zeroes? bc it’s APS-C ig???), the a7 series, the a9 (why did you skip a8???), and then the…a1? What happened to the pattern, why are we down to 1?
Also, their “ZV” lineup is a whole nother can of worms. The ZV-1 (okay, small number for 1” sensor p&s), ZV-E10 (bigger number due to larger sensor, E bc emount, that makes sense), and then the ZV-E1. Why did it go back to 1? It has a full-frame sensor, so you’d think it would get the biggest number. But I guess it’s like a6000 vs a7, where APS-C has superfluous zeroes.
Also, the a6000 is like a6100, a6400, a6700, etc. But why is the newer ZV-E10 the “ZV-E10 II”? Why not the ZV-E11 or ZV-E20? It’s also got a lot more expensive, so giving it the ZV-E20 title aa well as leaving the ZV-E10 for purchase would make a bit more sense, but sony doesn’t do that.
Sony makes a lot more stuff with weird names (TVs, MP3 players, etc.) but I won’t get into those.
And monitors are basically (alphanumeric soup)(screen size)(alphanumeric soup), basically all monitors have terrible names. The only exception might be Apple, but their “Studio Display” is a small 27” monitor that’s IPS and 60hz, not very “studio” besides the 5K resolution and maybe colour accuracy. Then there’s the “Pro Display XDR”, which at least deserves its “Pro” branding, but the “XDR” is kinda dumb, and they haven’t updated it in like 5 years or something so why is it still sold at such a high price???
You actually make me wonder…
This isn’t quite related to computers, but is definitely related to electronic technology.
Like, why the fuck is my watch model labeled as a Casio 3507 WS-1300H?
Like WTF? Why not give it an intuitive name, like 'Casio Watch, Tide Predictor #(year model), Grey Color"?
exactly! Just give us numbers and words that MAKE SENSE
One reason to avoid using words is that in a global economy, they may want to sell the same product in multiple countries, so you potentially run into translation issues/costs and confusion over whether a product is the same or not between two different places. Using just letters and numbers eliminates that.
Of course, that’s all for their own convenience, not for the convenience of the end customer.
Ah right that makes sense.
Doesn’t make it any less annoying though! 😁
But it sort of makes sense. If you use english words to name a product, it would be great for english speakers but terrible for anyone else due to translation issues and such.
I do think that they should just name their products with a sensible letters and numbers that’s easier to understand. Instead, you have a race to see who has the biggest number and the most letters :(
H is for High Performance, U is for Ultra-Low power usage. So if you want something for gaming choose an H if you want to have hours of battery life choose a U. Pretty simple and easy to st a glance see if s processor is what you’re looking for.
The 7 is not repeated on Ryzen 7 9700X, otherwise you wouldn’t have stuff like the Ryzen 5 1600X. The first 7 (or the 5 in my other example) is the segment, i.e. towards which market it’s directed, Ryzen 3 are entry levels that you should consider for your grandma, Ryzen 9 are high power CPUs. Then the first number of the 4 digits is the generation, the second one is the how it stacks up to others in it’s series, the third and fourth are extra differentiation if needed, then there’s some letters for feature flags. So for example your Ryzen 7 9700X is a high-end 9th generation high clock/performance CPU, just by that name alone I can guess that it outperforms a Ryzen 7 9500X and possibly matches a Ryzen 9 7700X. If you learn to read those it makes it very easy to figure out if an upgrade is worth it just by the model number.
USB naming convention is a mess, I’m not touching that.
Also not sure about the pro, none of my phone’s ever were pro or even had a pro version so not sure.
Sony is a bit weird, but WH-1000XM5 is a Wireless Headband (WH) 1000X is the model M5 is the generation, so those are newer than WH-1000XM4, and the next iteration of them will be called WH-1000XM6. The N is as you guessed noise canceling, the 1000X are top of the line so they have it too, no need to advertise it. I don’t know much about other products of them, but they do seem weird.
Monitor names can be very helpful, for example Dell uses [Series][Diagonal][Year][Ratio or Resolution][Features] so just by looking at a short code, for example I’m not even sure this monitor exists but a U3224QWC is an ultrawide QHD 32 inches IPS with anti-glare monitor released in 2024 with a USB-C input. That being said https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/j5pezf/computer_monitors/
For the ryzen 7 9700x I have the answer. Ryzen is the brand name, 7 is where it stacks up, the 7 in the 9700 says where it lines up vs other ryzen 7s in the 9000 series.
USB can suck a fat one.
The pro title is like the ‘performance’ version of cars. Sometimes it matters and there’s a lot of difference, Hyundai N is not the same as normal Hyundai. Sometimes it’s just a slight aesthetic difference. The title is to sell it not to be clear and accurate, normally. Some pro phones are definitely higher performing, others are almost identical.
I have no answers for Sony, outside of my area of knowledge, same for monitors.
That was a delight to read.
A simpler name would require a trademark. Go on, try to trademark a nice name. Or better yet - hundreds of them each year.
Randomly looking numbers and characters cannot be trademarked (one of the good examples was Intel’s move from x86 naming to Celeron and Pentium as they couldn’t prevent others calling their CPUs 486), so everyone can use them freely.
If I understand correctly, Intel attempted to trademark “586” and AMD objected because it would prevent them from using a consistent part numbering scheme. The courts agreed foring Intel to make up a brand name. They wanted something that sounded sciencey and technological, like the name of an element, hence the -ium suffix, and it was the fifth major version of the x86 platform, fiveium? No…penta…Pentium!
The number advertised is not actually the name of the product, but the vendor code or manufacturer SKU.
I’ve had some experience in how these SKUs come to be for large brands. In a lot of cases the people developing the new models have like a whole list of monitors they could create. Out of these a selection is made for which they will create, which capabilities are good etc. This is done per region and even if the capabilities are exactly the same, it will get a different SKU for the different region. This is important because the labeling could be different, often different plugs and manuals are included. Sometimes different paperwork needs to be filed, so it’s important the SKU matches the region. From this list of product SKUs the manufacturer can create for a region local distributors choose which ones they think are good for their market. This can often be hard and different distributors can choose different SKUs (depending on the manufacturer). Out of this list of available SKUs in the channel the shops can select which ones they want to carry. Some shops just carry them all (especially when dropshipping), other shops carefully select which ones they like.
This leads the shops to have seemingly random SKUs and nonsense numbers. But that’s because those SKUs were figured out all the way back in step one. Those lists can be huge and all the numbers need to be unique. Normally there is some sort of internal structure used to generate the SKUs. But the end result is just a confusing mess of numbers.
When looking at for example distributor level at what they carry or what is offered, the numbers make a little more sense.
So it isn’t ideal, but there is reason to the madness.
This is awesome context. Do you know of places consumers could go to find those slightly less mainstream SKUs? I’m assuming you mean it could be like a dual display port version of monitor vs a hdmi/displayport version or something meant for the PAL region vs NTSC (as examples)?
As an electronics hobbyist and frugal person … you can just literally add CA to any model number and you’ll get the Canadian version. That’s just one thing I’m aware of but I’m sure there’s other ways and I’d love to know
Well you’re always limited to what the distributors have selected for a certain region.
However you can get around this sometimes with so called “grey” import. That’s when you buy something meant for one region in another region, which happens a lot in Europe because the differences don’t really matter. For example something made for Germany is perfectly fine in the countries around Germany, they all use the same plugs, same regulations, the manual is often in every language anyways (plus who reads the manuals). But it can cause trouble when you need warranty as the manufacturer doesn’t like this, so they will refuse service. The EU has gotten on the ass of manufacturers to tell them to just service the customer, but it can be a hassle sometimes. In this case the reason for the different SKU has nothing to do with anything physical to the product, but instead the market it’s meant for. In some countries people are a bit richer and thus prices are higher, but smart people know you can just buy the German product from a shop in Germany and even with a bit more shipping it can still be cheaper. So sometimes it’s worth the effort.
This is also done for certain shops (for example Saturn/MediaMarkt in Europe) who get special SKUs just for them. These are often just the exact same SKU as available for the general market, but with a different number. They do this because a lot of countries have sites to compare prices at different shops. MediaMarkt had this strategy where they would heavily discount one model and market the shit out of that. This gave the public the idea MediaMarkt always had great deals. While in fact most models they sold were much more expensive than elsewhere. But nerds figured this out and created websites to compare prices between shops. So it would be obvious when the price was good at MediaMarkt and they would all buy that one, but when the price was higher they would know and not buy it. This destroyed the MediaMarkt strategy, so they made a deal with manufacturers to create different SKUs especially for them. This made it harder for the nerds to compare prices, as they used the SKUs to differentiate between different models.
For the different SKUs available in a region there are often shops available that sell them. Some shops select a certain amount of SKUs to a have a good selection from different manufacturers and have a simple selection for the customers. However other shops just sell everything the distributors have to offer. These often employ systems to automatically enrich and publish products as soon as the distributors lists them. With drop-shipping directly from the distributors, this gets even simpler. So you can recognize these shops as they have a lot of products and often don’t have great filter and search options.
Another excellent place is for example sites like Ebay, where you can find all sorts of products from all different regions. And they even have shops on there that buy stuff the distributor meant to sell, but for some reason (for example delays in shipping) couldn’t sell. Parties just buy up the entire stock and sell it through places like Ebay.
But in some cases, the manufacturer had some very weird SKUs that they could technically made, but nobody wanted them, so they never got made. This can lead to hobbyists to having easy modification options. For example a feature could be completely available on the PCB and even in the software, but the parts not populated because that SKUs didn’t include that feature. In that case it’s easy to just populate the parts and get the feature up and running.
In case you want something like 500 - 1000 parts (depending on the manufacturer and what kind of device it is, could be at least 5000 - 10000) you can often get the manufacturer to create a SKU especially for you. When this is one of the SKUs they initially planned but hadn’t selected, the costs isn’t even that high most of the times. But they can even make completely custom products as long as you are willing to buy enough volume.
Yeah but do you really know this industry? 😉 Thanks for elaborating!
Ok there are often resons for the madness.
Lets look at the naming standard of Dell monitors:
I have a Dell U2724D as my main monitor.
The syntax is [Series][Diagonal Size][Year][Ratio/Resolution][Features]
In my case the code for the Series is “U”
Since about 2010 their standard series has been:
E: Essential - Normally a TN anti glare panel, internal power, simple stand, 3 year warranty.
P: Professional - Normally an IPS anti glare panel, internal power, height/rotate adjustable stand, 3-year warranty.
S: Small Office/Home - Can be IPS, TN or VA panel, usually external power supply, slim stand, 1-year warranty.
U: Ultrasharp - IPS anti glare panel, internal power, height/rotate adjustable base, 3 year warranty.
UP: Ultrasharp with PrimerColor - additional color gamut.
AW: Alienware - High-end gaming
C: Commercial displays - Large format (50"+), for conference rooms and classrooms.
Ok so looking at my monitor, U2724D, we can see that it is from the Ultrasharp series.
The next section is the diagonal size, Dell uses two digits to represent the size, in my case it is 27, so I have a 27" monitor.
Then we come to the year section, this tells us the year the monitor was released, in my case it says 24, so my monitor was released in 2024.
Then we come to the resolution part:
S: standard ratio - 4:3 or 5:4.
no letter: computer widescreen - 16:10
H: HD widescreen - 16:9
W: Ultrawide - 21:9
D: QHD - 1440p
Q: 4K - 2160p
K: 8K - 4320p
In my case, the resolution letter is D, meaning my monitor is a QHD/1440p monitor.
Finally we have come to the Features section:
C: USB-C input - can accept DisplayPort over USB-C.
X: HDMI cable included, instead of standard DsiplayPort cable.
T: Touchscreen
G: nVidia G-sync
F: AMD Freesync
J: Wireless charging stand
Z: Videoconference camera
A: Monitor arm included, no stand
E: Ethernet networking, works like a proper dock.
S: Built in speakers.
My monitor does not have any extra features, but my dad has the U2721DE monitor which has a built in dock and networking.
The reason for the annoying names is to differentiate features, series, year releases and more.
that naming scheme at least makes a bit of sense, but you’d need to KNOW the naming scheme. Most people probably aren’t well-versed at the naming schemes of every manufacturer. There are probably too many models forcing manufacturers to make alphanumeric soup names.
Why not something like the “Dell Ultrasharp 27” 1440p 2024“ (Ultrasharp doesn’t need to be repeated again as a “U”, instead of ambiguous numbers it’s more clearly defined which is screen size which is year)
Dell Ultrasharp 27” 1440p 2024
Using that as a product name will introduce more risk of errors, and for the main consumer, businesses, it makes more sense to use a short product code.
Imagine an IT manager ordering new monitors, they can just call their supplier up and say:
Hey, I need some new monitors, can I order 8 new U2724D monitors and 8 new U2724DE?
Instead of saying
Hey, I need some new monitors, can I order 8 new Dell Ultrasharp 27” 1440p 2024 monitors, and 8 new Dell Ultrasharp 27” 1440p 2024 monitors with the built in dock with networking?
The first one is far easier to parse and make sure you get the stuff you want, the other is far more prone to errors.
This is not even getting into the issues with product databases and inventory management.
To add to this, it’s a hell of a lot easier to cross language barriers with the the alphanumeric product name than it is with the English name, which only works for English and would need accurately translating for every language&product for every region you want to buy/sell in.
It would be an absolute nightmare to try for every product that’s sold in multiple regions, etc
fair point. Dell in my opinion isn’t so bad at this, especially given their extensive range of products for both consumers and businesses
At least back when my bicycle was made in August 1981, the serial number made sense, assuming you know the syntax.
My bike’s serial number starts with H1???
H is the 8th letter of the alphabet, so that was made in the 8th month, August.
1 is the last digit of the year in the 1980s, so 1981.
Things were almost so much simpler once upon a time, but yeah the coding of model names and serial numbers has definitely gotten more complicated over the
yearsdecades…interesting
I consider Dell’s naming scheme of their monitors the gold standard. It’s short, descriptive and easy to remember.
I got a U2720Q myself, and I know I got it because I know what size it is and when I bought it. I also got another monitor that’s seemingly just a random series of numbers. I can’t remember a single digit of that one.
The naming scheme are often logical but the problem is each brand has a different scheme with different logic. So it take some quite time when you are comparing different products from different companies.
PC component makers used to. They found it hard to swindle people into buying what was most profitable over what was best performing, so they deliberately made their naming schemes incomprehensible.
Sony audio products are terrible about this. Earbuds with names like WF-1000XM5, like how am I supposed to shop for that?
and it’s not even consistent: the WF-CH700N doesn’t get an “M2”, the second version is called the “WF-CH710N”. Also, what does the “CH” stand for? cheap?
Yeah you gotta go get the huh duh six hungeos from old mate Senny.
I really only see that with electronics and mechanical parts. Maybe it’s because they just make so many slightly different variants, and the average person using the parts aren’t necessarily the ones buying and installing the parts, it’s just easier to give them a serial number instead of an easy to remember name?
It does make it harder to recommend a thing when asked. Like every time someone asks about good headphones, I have to find the random letters and numbers of what the set I have actually are to suggest them.
CPUs aren’t named after serial numbers, yet they are still confusing as all heck. Laptop processors are much worse with even more letters to choose from. Motherboards are also very weird, what’s with the superfluous “0” at the end? It’s never used for anything.
Besides those however, regular things are also terribly named. Besides headphones and smartphones which I have already mentioned, there’s also shoes, cars, door locks, light bulbs, flashlights, tablets, laptops, etc. Jeez that’s a lot, and those are just the ones on the top of my head
One of the characters in a vehicle VIN number indicates the original paint color. Ain’t that cute too?
Some companies do a great job at naming, versioning, model numbering, etc. You can tell those companies care about the customer. However, most places are crap at it. They fall back to the advertising. The ads tell you what the “best” one is to buy (usually the most expensive model at the lowest specs for the MAXIMUM profit). And you damn well better buy the most advertised model or you’re a bad consumer and no one will like you because everyone else bought the model we told them to!! Never believe the advertising, never believe that Brand A is better than Brand R, brands mean almost nothing these days. So many products are made by 1 warehouse and branded for 150 different companies, all the exact same product. The bottom line is, they just want you to buy all their crap, no one cares if you can figure it out or are happy.
darn it capitalism
Manipulative tricks. They do NOT want to make it easy for you.
For example, if they can keep your brain busy with a complicated name, then you put a lot of brain energy into remembering their product.
The “Silver Adam 590 HT” is so much better than the Adam.
I believe we’re running out of “normal” names that are not already trademarked and still have internet domains available. That’s IMO one reason why startups and their products have those weird names.
I feel like the belongs to some kind of Tech Rant community since a lot of these questions kind of feel rhetorical.
But either way I’m here for it! 100% agreed!
I don’t really understand what you’re getting at.
Smart phones are easy to identify by their model name? As In the current Samsung flagship phone is the S25 Ultra. S for Samsung. 25 for 2025. Ultra being better than Pro or whatever.
IDK about tech products but “obfuscation” is a strategic component of pricing. Telcos do this with their phone bills. This type of call costs this much per minute and that type of call is free for the first 5 minutes per call and calls to these numbers are a flat rate for the first 5 hours per month but you also get 30 free minutes plus another 45 minutes to be used at off-peak times.
They do this so you can’t compare to other providers.
for samsung phones, you’ve got the “A” series for cheaper models (which are A0x, A1x, A2x, etc. but why can’t it be something like Ax, Bx, Cx, etc? Otherwise people might think that an A51 might be newer than the A36, for example. Having more than 3 letters , 4 if you count the “M” series, would make things much easier. Overall though, I think Samsung’s naming schemes (for their phones) make a bit more sense than some others.
I was mostly talking about Apple and the “Pro” designation not meaning what it means. And there’s also quite a few phones with “Pro Plus” which 1. isn’t professional and 2. aren’t plus-sized models of the original “Pro”.
And yeah, I think the point you make on “obfuscation” might be correct.
also btw, I’ve been thinking of trying to restructure and un-confuse the names of things with terrible naming schemes and pitch them to manufacturers. Is that a good idea? (maybe not the pitching to manufacturer part since they probably won’t listen)
How do you deal with any other languages aside from English? Even if a product is destined for an English only market (which let’s be honest are basically small toys with English on them and English language books), anyone manufacturing will likely be using components manufactured in multiple different countries, with different languages and different ways of structuring names etc.
This is basically how you used to get Chinglish names and instructions for stuff on cheap products from China
If you want to see the outcome of what your currently suggesting, lookup longest car names, there’s a lot more English in them, as well as abbreviations yet they’re still a mess to understand/interpret from a layman’s perspective
fair, using more words doesn’t really solve the issue.
The problem is money, trademarks, and brand identities. You only associate Playstation with video games because it has been around for a long time. I remember when those came out. Prior to 1994, Playstation was not a thing.
Creating a new standard to unify and simplify things seems like a good idea, but the result usually only adds to the confusion. Relevant XKCD.
It’s on purpose and AFAIK for two main reasons:
- To confuse the buyer
- To be able to trademark and protect the brand
