To be clear, I am not complaining. I am well aware that the target demographic is students and casual users. It is just an observation.
However, the price argument doesn't make sense. I bought a EUR300 laptop for my wife 3 years ago that has a Intel Core i3 N305 CPU (https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/231805/...), and that CPU, like any modern CPU from Intel, has virtualization instructions.
Heck, my Chromebook Duet with a Snapdragon 7c Gen 2, that compared to this A18 Pro chip is laughable underpowered, also has virtualization instructions (this is why Crostini, the Linux virtual environment for ChromeOS, works).
I used an M1 Air with 8GB as my main software development machine for a year during Covid. It was fine.