5 Best Android Emulators for PC

Android Emulators are being widely used for PC these days. Use of Android Emulators for PC is justified as there are many valid reasons for it. For App developers, they need Android Emulators to test out their applications before releasing them in market. People obsessed with games sometimes want play mobile games on their PC with use of mouse and keyboard and experience better visuals on big screen, for this purpose they need Android Emulators for PC.

There may be many other reasons to use these Android Emulators for PC, but whatever the reason is, they are easy to download and easy to use.  You can easily download any of the android emulator easily from Google, some of them are available for free and some are available at some cost. You can download the one which fulfills your requirements and is affordable for you. Here are 5 Best Android emulators for PC you can use.

1. Android Studio’s Emulator:

Android Studio is a well-known development environment for developing Android apps and then testing them for different devices.

Android Studio comes with a wide range of tools for development of up to date android apps as well as android based games.

Along with the development environment, Android Studio offers a built-in emulator for developers. Through this built-in emulator, developers can easily test their apps and games and how they will behave on which device and which version of Android.

If you are already not familiar with Android Studio environment and how it works, this emulator can be complicated for you to understand and perform emulation. Also Android Studio takes a little bit time to load and be ready to use so it’s not recommended for beginners at consumer level but it is perfect for developers to use for testing purposes.

 Kotlin support is added for developers.

Set-up of Android Studio emulator is free but it doesn’t come separately, you have to download complete Android Studio set-up.

2. LDPlayer:

If you are a dedicated gamer, LDPlayer Android emulator is surely for you. It is limited to Android Nougat 7.1 but still you can play almost all of latest android games.  It offers all the features needed for gamers to have memorable gaming experience, these features include perfect keyboard controls, multi-instance, macros controls, high FPS for better visualization, and graphical support. One noticeable thing is that it receives active updates almost every month which is rare.

Almost all latest android games are supported including Clash of Clans, Garena Free Fire, Black Desert Mobile, PUBG mobile, Among Us and many others.

Headshot in Free Fire is sometimes difficult to pull off but in recent update of LDPlayer, performance is being optimized and auto headshot is now easy to pull off. This thing is making LDPlayer a top choice of Free Fire players. You can easily download it from Google and it is totally free.

3. BlueStacks:

If you are reading this article, there is high probability of you being well aware of BlueStacks as it is the most popular emulator amongst all Android emulators and its popularity is justified because of many reasons.

First of all it is compatible with both Mac and Windows and secondly it gets updates on regular basis which optimize its performance.

BlueStacks is dedicated for true gamers and supports a nice range of android games as well as it offers all the basic features needed for gaming like key mapping and other basic settings. For best or worst, you can play all kind of games on this excellent android emulator.

The only drawback of BlueStacks is that sometimes it feels bloated to use and BlueStacks tried to fix this in 2018 BlueStacks4 upgrade. Just like Android Studio’s emulator, it is also heavy to load or you can say it is heaviest amongst all.

Almost all of the features are available for free, but some of them are paid with a very cheap subscription of $2 per month.

Read More: How To Install Android Apps and Games for PC via BlueStacks

4. ARChon:

ARChon is something totally different as it is not a traditional emulator.

Instead of downloading it to your PC, you need to install it to your Google Chrome as its extension. Once the extension is downloaded, now this android emulator gives the ability of running android games and apps to Google Chrome.

You might not find it an easy one to use and get it in running state. You need to install any of the android app or game to Chrome and from chrome extension of ARChon, you need to get an APK for that app and then download that APK.

If the downloaded APK is not compatible with your PC, you can change it using ARChon and get the compatible one. It is may be the most difficult Android emulator to use but it is works perfectly alright with all of the operating systems including  Mac OS, Linux and Windows.

It is free for all kind of use but there is an option for donations through which you can empower the developers for better updates in future.

5. GameLoop:

GameLoop as obvious from name is purely a gaming emulator. Some of you may know it as Tencent Gaming Buddy which is its former name.

It is developed in such a way that it fulfills all the needs which a gamer can ask for in an emulator. Due to this reason, its developers call it as an official emulator for games. It supports a wide range of games including all popular games like Call of Duty Mobile, PUBG Mobile, Among Us and Free Fire. Nice keyboard controls and good performance are promised by Tencent.

If you want to use this for productivity or for development purposes, it is simply not recommended but for good gaming experience, it is highly recommended. You can go for it if you are tired of gaming on small screen with less FPS rate.

Just like others, it is also free.

Uses of Emulators:

1. App Development:

Most common use of best Android emulators is for development reasons. Android app or prefer to test their apps and games before the final release to avoid bugs and errors so that they can be used perfectly on every device. For this purpose, android emulators are used and the most common is Android Studio simulator. It demonstrates that how certain app will work on certain device. Other mentionable emulators for this purpose are Xamarin and Genymotion.

2. Gaming:

Gaming is now a very common hobby to practice and with the increase of gaming trend, the urge of gamers to play games on bigger screens with better gaming experience have also increased. Android emulators are best for this purpose. There are three main uses for emulators. With the use of these best Android emulators, gamers can have long gaming sessions on PC without worrying about battery life as well as many macro tricks which are difficult on mobile can be easily performed using emulators. In our view, best Android emulators for gamers are LDPlayer, BlueStacks, MeMu and Nox.

3. Productivity Purpose:

Third and you can say the rare use of best android emulators is for productivity purpose. Rare because now a days Chromebooks are very common and they are also affordable. So you can use them for running android apps but still if you want to experience productive android apps on your PC, there is range of best Android Emulators for PC for you. You can go for ARChon, PrimeOS and Bliss.

New versions of Android i.e. Android 10 and Android 11 are currently not available on any of android emulator but you can use Android 7.0 Nougat and Android 9.0 Pie on these emulators.

Build your own Emulator:

Yes! You can build your own emulator at very low cost or even for free. You can easily do it with the help of Virtual Box. There are many guides available on internet, you just have to search for the one which is perfect for you and can fulfill your needs. We recommend you not to start developing without any tutorial or guide as it can be tedious. If you don’t have any knowledge of development, you will be stuck with a messy chunk.  It’s better to build with the help of guides and tutorials and customize your own emulator and enjoy the experience for free with the sense of ownership.