Where is Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite Dev Kit?

Update - September 26: Today my Dev Kit finally arrived! And of course, the first thing I did was tear it down—check out my teardown photos of the Snapdragon Dev Kit internals here.

Update 2 - October 17: Today Qualcomm cancelled all remaining orders, and will no longer support the Dev Kit.

I signed up to buy a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Dev Kit the second I found out about it. It's supposed to be the Mac mini killer for Windows.

Snapdragon X Elite Dev Kit Transparent

They even promoted it with this amazing-looking transparent shell, and I and hundreds of other devs were ready to pony up the $899 Qualcomm was asking.

Their pre-order form said it would be out June 18. Almost exactly one month later, I got an email saying it was available. Great!

So I went to the purchase page on Arrow... and it showed as out of stock. That was about 15 minutes after receiving the email.

There were three possibilities:

  • They vastly underestimated the demand, and/or there was a crush of orders immediately upon launch.
  • They didn't actually have any for sale yet.
  • They didn't coordinate with Arrow on the launch timing, so Arrow didn't show any stock yet.

In any case, I was surprised to see they had stock the next day (Tuesday). Well... at least it said "In stock: 1 part".

Since the order page said "Ships in 1 day", I placed an order, hoping to receive a dev kit by the end of this week.

I'm glad I didn't pay for overnight shipping, though, because Wednesday, the shipping date on my order slipped from Thursday to... June 12, 2026! I bemusingly documented the saga on Twitter/X:

I'll update this post as the shipping date changes over time. As of late Thursday, Arrow's product listing says: "5 parts: Ships in 2 days", and my order now says "Est. Ship: 14 Aug 2024".

August is a little more reasonable than 2026, but I wonder how many units Qualcomm produced, and whether they completely whiffed on their estimate of how many people would want a Snapdragon Dev Kit.

I originally planned on putting the X Elite through its paces in early July, measuring efficiency and testing Linux on it. Linaro's been working on Linux support for the Snapdragon X, but according to the few people I've seen testing it on X Elite laptops, there are rough edges.

I posted a video testing some other things on Arm Linux, where I think hardware support and compatibility is in a better state than Windows on Arm, despite Microsoft's massive marketing campaign around 'Copilot Plus' and 'Redefining the PC'... you can watch that video here:

Further reading

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Comments

When I placed the order it said shipping next day. After a day the order had slipped to "Shipping by July 26th" As of right now, it says Shipping by Aug 14th. I spoke with their customer service and they said they do have stock and that they would update me via email

Somehow I don't have confidence in their customer service, not to mention that they appear to take the money upfront despite not shipping till more than a month out

The kicker is the product page (which is all you can see until after you complete an order) still says "In stock: Ships tomorrow"... and yet my order page is still changing from day to date, right now settling on August 14.

Just today my estimated ship date got moved from August 14 to August 28.
I'm starting to wonder if we're ever going to get these things...

I ordered this, just like you, given the whole ordering workflow would see delivery by end of July… (and the Buy button still does show 5 in stock for shipping tomorrow; only the information page advises about delays!)

I’ve now left the US, and Arrow are making it extremely difficult to cancel the order. It seems like a dark pattern to make order workflow very easy with misleading information (yes, I paid for expedited shipping too!), and then deliver the real delivery dates post-submission. Then cancelling the order is through a support request rather than being another quick web app workflow like ordering was.

I predict that order delivery dates will slip and slip and slip because they already have got your credit card and have made cancellation near impossible.

Are Arrow really the best distributor that Qualcomm could have used for this stuff? My experience so far suggests that they aren’t setup to manage retail customers. It’s big possibility that Qualcomm and Microsoft will alienate their enthusiast devs by choosing such a poor distributor.

I'll be compiling anything I find out for an eventual video (whether or not I ever get a Dev Kit unit...). It's fishy the whole way this has been handled, from developers who were promised units "before anyone else" (and still haven't gotten any) to the botched launch/slipping dates, to the 'in stock / ships tomorrow' until after you buy one, then the actual shipping dates that seem pretty fluid.

The shipping and delivery dates have now been updated to Sept 3rd and Sept 14th

At this point I’m canceling my order. I’d rather put the $1k into getting an AmpereOne 144-26X than this

I raised a web request to cancel on July 22nd, and after a lot of back-and-forth appears to have been processed August 2nd (although laughably $29 expedited shipping fee still showing due!). So it’s 10 business days to process.

It would be interesting to know if calling them is any faster…

Today morning I got a mail mentioning my item is reserved and packed. But later afternoon when I checked the order history in Arrow portal, it's showing order is cancelled. When I contacted them they have no idea why it got cancelled.

Hello,

Thank you for your order of the Snapdragon Development Kit for Windows (C8380-12C-MP-32G). We are confirming that your order will ship later in September. Qualcomm Technologies would also like to inform you about an important update to your product.

“Your device will now ship with a USB-C to HDMI dongle, in lieu of an embedded HDMI port. We look forward to seeing what incredible apps and experiences developers produce utilizing this device.” – Qualcomm Technologies

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused by these changes.

If you still wish to receive these units as ordered, you need to do nothing. We are able to refund 10% of the purchase price of this order, as well as any additional expedited shipping charges. Your order has already been updated with these changes. For customers that have not been charged yet, you will see the 10% price reduction for the Snapdragon Development Kit for Windows (C8380-12C-MP-32G) on your final order statement.

If you would like to modify, or even cancel, your order based upon these changes contact us at MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "app.connected.arrow.com" claiming to be [email protected]. Cancellations will receive a full refund. To ensure timely processing, please include your original order number WEB-SO29726635.
Qualcomm
Thank you,
Arrow Electronics

I was refreshing the product page daily to order when possible, but now it says "This page doesn't exist".

I've ordered a Thinkpad T14s gen 6 which is expected to ship late September. By then mainline might already support the T14s as commits have landed in linux-next a few days ago.

Looking forward to your review.

edit: removed links

There's also a 'getting started' guide online which suggests the dev kit comes with a 2.5A power supply. If that's device side it's unlikely to support the 80W TDP I thought we'd be getting.

Following up on the 80TDP concern-

Let me know if I have the calcs wrong;
P(W)=V(V)×I(A)

For example, at 120 volts we get

P=120V×2.5A=300W

which is > than the 80W mentioned. So I think we are good?

We're fine if it's mains side but not if it's device side, and it'd be weird to quote the mains side current. As an example the label on an Apple USB-C charger says 60.9W output, 100V 1.5A aka 150W input, but the charger is called a 61W charger.

At a guess 2.5A would be device side and at 20V that's only 50W. We'll see what turns up though if it eventually ships, mine now says it'll ship and be delivered on the 20th of September which was yesterday. It has not shipped.

Jeff! You embarrassed Qualcomm into cancelling an entire product! ;) Seriously, it really does seem like they have woefully mishandled this thing from start to finish, which is a real shame because there are so few manufacturers in the market. This is bad news for fans of the architecture, not just for Qualcomm and Microsoft.