All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
Which of these is the odd one out: TX-P65VT30B, KDL-22EX320 or 55LW980T?
Got it yet? Yes, that's right: none of them. They're all names of televisions by Sony, LG and Panasonic.
And they're all utter crap. The product names, that is, not the devices themselves. As marketing hooks these gadget monikers are as useful to the world as an X Factor contestant, and equally as worthy of being booted off the precipice of existence.
But why are these product names so consistently awful, after all these years?
It's a problem that plagued the mobile phone industry during its progression from business tool to omnipresent consumer obsession.
We used to be sold phones like the LG CU500v, the Samsung SGH-X427m, or -- and who could forget it -- the Sharp 770SH. Today, however, telecommunications manufacturers have evolved their name tagging to the likes of the LG Optimus, Samsung Galaxy Nexus and Sharp, er, Aquos SH8298U. (Sharp didn't get the industry memo about modern phone nomenclature, obviously.)
It's a trend that has loosely evolved in tandem with the popularisation of modern consumer gadgetry. Apple nailed it with "iPod" for MP3 players, Motorola nailed it for phones with the RAZR and Asus initially nailed it for netbooks with the Eee PC, before
subsequently muddying that success with 9,000 variations on said theme a year later.
So why not TVs? TV names have been the John Merrick of consumer electronics for years, and just like the Elephant Man, they sorely stick out at conventions like the Consumer Electronics Show. During CES 2012 last week, Sony launched the catchy KDL-26EX550 and Samsung unveiled the hook-laden UNES8000. I'll never remember those. But those same two companies also showed off the Xperia S smartphone and a new Galaxy Note tablet, respectively.
Those, I'll remember. In fact both are attractive gadgets indeed.
I nagged Ian Morris, editor of reviews for Pocket-lint.com and a presenter on Sky1 HD's new tech show Gadget Geeks, to shed some light on this naming disease. "I've been reviewing TVs for more than five years, and in that time their names have always been beyond a joke," Morris said. "The problem, it seems, comes from the manufacturer's desire to include a series number, as well as a screen size and sometimes even the IQ of the product manager as one of many numbers."
A reasonable intention, but the catalyst for an explosion of bad marketing spiel. Regardless of a company's intention to include as much "metadata" about a device in its name as possible, it's not attractive and it makes the name ultimately garbled to the man in the street. Following the same reasoning, I should refer to my younger brother as ANDYM6F24YCNET because his name's Andy, he's male, six-foot tall, 24 years old and works at CNET. But I don't. I call him Andy because it has a more marketable undertone, I suppose. "Some companies have tried names," explains Morris, "but it rarely works. LG's Scarlett being the one that springs to mind. "I think the problem is, coming up with names for TVs is very difficult, but increasing a number from, say, VT30 to VT50 -- as Panasonic has -- gives you a clear idea that this new TV is, well, newer, and hopefully better."
Realistically I can understand the intention behind such naming conventions, but it baffles me as to why it hasn't evolved in parallel with other product categories. Often, manufacturers will at least refer to their TV products by a shortened version -- EX550 for Sony's KDL-26EX550 -- which helps, but it's still not up to that same company's own standards when it comes to recent phones or posh laptops.
As a less pressing problem, it has also been a pain in the ass for reviews sites. A review of a KDL-40EX650 may not pull in googlers searching for the KDL-32EX650, even though it's likely the same LCD panel behind the glass simply cut to a different size.
In the future I'd like to see TVs marketed in similar ways to phones, where they have a single name and the size, for example, is simply a technicality that requires consideration when purchasing, not browsing. It shouldn't be any different to an iPhone 4S coming in black or white, with 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of memory -- it's just the iPhone 4S, not the iPhone 4SB32GB.
So at next year's CES, I hope to see a Sony Bravia Galaxy, or a Panasonic Vierra Xperia. Not a Braviaperia32X65890-KTXPLFAIL.
Actually, better still, I hope to see a Sony Bravia Nate. Can't be hard, Nokia pretty much did it once.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
