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No Stupid Questions @lemmy.world
sbird @lemmy.world

Why don’t brands make simpler names?

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…)

45 comments

  • 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???

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • It's on purpose and AFAIK for two main reasons:

    • To confuse the buyer
    • To be able to trademark and protect the brand
45 comments