This Windows Developer Kit Is the Mac Mini of the PC World
Apple has had great success with its M-series chips. These SoCs are now used in almost the entire Mac portfolio of the company, from the original and functional M1 to the powerful M1 Ultra. But Apple isn’t the only company eyeing Arm-based hardware. Microsoft is also willing and willing to push the development of Arm for Windows. That’s why the company has released its first Arm-based desktop: Windows Dev Kit 2023 .
Codenamed Project Volterra, the dev kit is an Arm-based machine powered by a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 processor with a matching Adreno GPU. It comes with 32GB LPDDR4x RAM, 512GB NVMe flash, and a plethora of ports including two USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, three USB-A 3.2 Gen 2, a Mini DisplayPort, and an Ethernet port. The device also has an NPU (Neural Processing Unit) built in, which assists machine learning and artificial intelligence programs.
All of these specs cost just $599, making the Windows Dev Kit 2023 $100 cheaper than Apple’s entry-level M1 Mac mini. This device is of course powered by an M1 chip with an octa-core CPU and GPU, as well as a 16-core NPU. However, it only comes with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, which is half the Volterra’s memory and a quarter of the storage. Ports are good though: Ethernet, two Thunderbolt USB-C 4 ports, two USB-A 3.1 Gen 2 ports, HDMI, and a headphone jack.
Of course, specifications on paper are not everything. Apple has proven the M1’s potential since its introduction, even with basic specs like 8GB of RAM. In testing, the M1 vastly outperforms the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3. It even compares when running Windows in a virtual machine: the M1 wins in single-core testing and nearly beats the 8cx Gen 3 in multi-core.
Still, for an Arm-based mini Windows machine, the dev kit is an interesting choice, even if it’s not designed for you. Microsoft only sells this product to software developers, although anyone can buy it. There’s no need to prove that you’re making software, which means you don’t have to pay the $19 fee to create a developer account .
However, the purpose of this product is to test and build software using the Arm architecture. Arm is growing rapidly, but there are still many apps and games that are not optimized or platform incompatible. By creating an enticing developer suite, Microsoft is trying to increase the percentage of native Arm applications.
There is little on the market that can compete with this type of arm machines. You could take a look at something like the Beelink GTR 5 (which sells for $900 but can be found for much less), but it’s powered by an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX. For Arm-based work, with this form factor and power potential, the only other device in its category is actually the M1 Mac mini.
Even if that’s not Microsoft’s intention, we’ll soon see tech reviewers running tests on the development kit to see how it performs as a mainstream PC. If the feedback is positive, it is possible that Microsoft will offer the product to consumers in the future. I would like to see a real Mac mini competitor on the market.
Windows Dev Kit is available in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, UK and US.