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HP is rebranding its consumer and commercial PCs. The company will no longer use branding like Specter and will instead use Omni for all of its consumer-oriented laptops, desktops and all-in-ones (AIOs). Likewise, it will no longer call its commercial laptops Dragonfly.

HP announced today that it will no longer release PCs under custom serial names such as Pavilion. Instead, each HP consumer PC will be called either OmniBook for laptops, OmniDesk for desktops, or OmniStudio for AIOs. PCs will also have a modifier ranging from 3 to 5, 7, X or Ultra to denote entry level to advanced PCs. For example, the HP OmniBook Ultra would represent HP’s highest-end consumer laptop.

“For example, the HP OmniBook 3 will appeal to customers who prioritize entertainment and personal use, while the OmniBook X will be designed for those with higher creative and technical demands,” said Stacey Wolff, senior vice president of design and sustainability at HP, via a press release today.

The Omni branding is a nod to one of HP’s first laptops (HP’s first laptop was the 1984 HP-110), the OmniBook, which debuted in 1993. The debut design, the OmniBook 300, had an Intel 386 processor, a 9-inch VGA monochrome display and up to 40MB memory. According to the HP Museum, it debuted at a starting price of $1,515. HP continued to target OmniBooks at businesses until the last model, the OmniBook XE3, was released in 2001.

So far, HP has announced one new Omni PC, the OmniBook X. It has a 12-core Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100, 16GB or 32GB of MPDDR5x-8448 memory, up to 2TB of storage, and a 14-inch, 2240×1400 IPS display.

HP indicates the Latin translation of omni, meaning “all” (or everything), as the rationale behind the naming update. The new name should give buyers confidence that the computers will deliver everything they need. However, I would forgive you if the brand made you think of a holiday instead.

HP is also getting rid of some of its commercial series names, such as the Pro. From now on, the new lower-end commercial laptops will be ProBooks. There will also be ProDesktop and AIO ProStudio desktops. These PCs will have either modifier 2 for entry-level designs, or modifier 4 for ones with a bit more power. For example, the HP ProDesk 2 is less powerful than the HP ProDesk 4. Anything more powerful would be considered an EliteBook (laptops), EliteDesk (desktops), or EliteStudio (AIOs). For Elite PCs, the modifiers go from 6 to 8, X and then Ultra. Today’s Dragonfly laptop would fall into the Ultra category.

HP did less revision to its commercial lineup as it “recognized the need to preserve brand equity and familiarity with our current sub-brands,” Wolf said, adding that HP “recognized the creation of additional product names like Dragonfly that made for these products to stand out, rather than being seen as part of an overall portfolio.”

HP will still sell Omen-branded gaming laptops and desktops. It also recently announced new ZBook-branded workstation laptops. HP will also continue to consider add-ons such as the Fold for devices with a foldable screen or the Flip for 2-in-1 devices.

The first laptop announced under the new commercial naming scheme is the EliteBook Ultra G1q, which starts at $1,700 on June 18. It has a Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100, 16GB of LPDDR5x-8400 memory, up to 1TB of storage, and a 14-inch 2240×1400 IPS screen.

HP’s rebranding is in line with recent efforts to streamline PC naming conventions, including by Intel and AMD, which have had mixed results. HP’s rebranding is far from inventive, especially considering it reuses some of the ideas used in the past. The need for the word “book” to be tied to a laptop also seems outdated. Based on the names alone, I personally would rather own a Specter than an OmniBook. Although the naming schemes have a reasonable logic behind them, the average buyer might not immediately know the difference between, say, an OmniDesk versus an EliteDesk.

New AI marketing, of course

As you might expect from any tech rebrand, marketing push, or product launch these days, HP is also announcing a new logo that will appear on its PCs, as well as other products or services that essentially involve AI.

The two laptops announced today carry the logo. According to Wolf, in PCs, the logo means the systems have an integrated NPU “with 40+ trillion operations per second.” They also come with a chatbot based on ChatGPT 4, an HP spokesperson told me.

The announcement means HP joins countless other tech brands desperate to capitalize on the growing interest in generative AI. Although many mainstream users don’t engage in serious AI workloads or require immediate access to AI chatbots, the tech industry, including PCs, is constantly looking for new ways to convince people that their favorite gadget suddenly needs some kind of forced feature to AI.