I was hesitating to ask this but in many applications such as the ones with electrical machines or relays we always read such precautions or considerations: “If the load is inductive do that don’t do this ect.”

I know that some loads are very inductive such as electric motors, transformers, relays, any sort of coil operated stuff. I also know what power factor is and the phasor represation of AC currents and voltages. But in reality is there a way to categorize devices as inductive or not. Because no device is pure resistive or inductive or capacitive.

For example, a triac based SSR is not recommended to use with zero crossing. Alright so if I use a transformer as a load I can understand that zero crossing is no good for that.

I mean there are some loads such as power supplies where I dont know whether they are inductive enough.

As a load take an SMPS and a linear power supply for instance. Imagine you have a zero crossing tye SSR. And your load could be one of those power supplies. Would you consider the linear power supply an inductive load? How about if the load were an SMPS?