Microsoft’s Snapdragon-powered Developer Mini PC includes 32GB of RAM and costs $599.

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it would be releasing new hardware to encourage more developers to start using and supporting the Arm version of Windows. Dubbed “Project Volterra,”all we knew about it at the time was that it would use an unnamed Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and NVMe-based storage, that it would support at least two monitors, and that it would have a decent amount of ports.

Today, Microsoft is releasing Volterra with a bold new name: Windows Dev Kit 2023. Dev Kit 2023 will use the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, essentially the same chip as Microsoft’s SQ3 in the new 5G version. Surface Pro 9 – Plus 512GB of storage and a whopping 32GB of RAM for a surprisingly low price of $599.

We don’t know exactly how fast the 8cx Gen 3 will be (Qualcomm says CPU performance is “up to 85 percent faster”than the 8cx Gen 2, which puts it somewhere below but within reach of a modern laptop Core i5 processor). But 512 GB of disk space and 32 GB of memory should make Dev Kit 2023 useful as a development and testing environment.

Microsoft says the set-top box can connect to three monitors simultaneously using two USB-C ports and a mini DisplayPort, and that up to two of those displays can be 4K screens at 60Hz. Three USB-A ports, Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1 complete the connectivity options.

Dev Kit 2023 continues Microsoft’s efforts to ensure that the entire Windows development tool chain runs natively on Arm hardware without the performance penalty associated with converting x86 code to Arm, which Windows uses to ensure compatibility with the broader set of Windows applications. Visual Studio, both old and new versions. NET Framework, Visual C++ Runtime, and other Windows development software are available either as Arm versions already or as Arm Previews that will typically be released by the end of the year.

The latest officially sanctioned Arm PC for Windows developers is last year’s $219 ECS LIVA QC170 (another name that’s off the tongue). It was much cheaper than the 2023 Dev Kit, but it was also much less powerful, with a weak Snapdragon 7c processor , just 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of slow eMMC storage. I have used QC170 and it works but don’t like it. In everyday use, Dev Kit 2023 should feel like a modern mid-range PC.