$899 mini PC puts Snapdragon X Elite into a mini desktop for developers

Microsoft and Qualcomm are both making a concerted effort to make Windows on Arm a reality after years of slow progress and false starts. One thing companies have done to onboard software developers is to offer mini PC development kits, which can be plugged into a software developer’s normal multi-monitor setup and don’t require the same cash outlay than a Surface tablet or laptop of equivalent specifications. .

Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows, a small, black plastic mini PC with the same internal hardware as the new wave of Copilot+ PCs featuring Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X Elite processors. The box is pretty generously equipped, with a slightly faster-than-normal version of the Snapdragon

Unlike the Windows Dev Kit 2023, which appeared to be a repurposed Surface Pro 9 motherboard thrown into a black plastic box, the Snapdragon Dev Kit appears to be purpose-built. It has a single USB-C port on the front and two USB-C ports, an HDMI port, two USB-A ports, a headphone/speaker jack, and an Ethernet port on the back. It’s not an overwhelming complement of ports, but it’s consistent with what Apple offers in the Mac mini.

Perhaps most importantly for developers looking to play with Microsoft’s new wave of AI-accelerated development features and tools, the Snapdragon Dev Kit includes the same NPU as all of the Copilot+ devices announced yesterday. Qualcomm claims that the NPU is capable of performing 45 trillion operations per second (TOPS), a bit above the 40 TOPS that Microsoft has set as the floor for Copilot+ PCs; This requirement means that no current generation Intel and AMD laptops or desktops are eligible for the label. x86 processors with higher performance NPUs are expected to arrive this fall.

The bad news is that this kit will cost you $899, which is $300 more than the Windows Dev Kit 2023 (released in 2022). It’s also $680 more than the older ECS LIVA QC710 based on Snapdragon 7c, the first Arm development box offered by Microsoft. While this model is significantly underspecified, it appears there is an opportunity to offer a cheaper case (perhaps with a Snapdragon X Plus and 16GB of RAM) to developers or users who still want to experiment with a compatible system Copilot+, but who don’t. I don’t want to spend almost $1,000 on a desktop computer.

Considering that a Surface laptop with a Snapdragon trial or as a general-purpose desktop computer. You can sign up to pre-order the box now, and it will start shipping on June 18.