Android emulators for PC & Mac, Android Studio, Bluestacks, MeMu Play features, cons and pros
Emulators can be used for gaming, Gamers can use emulators on their computers to make some games easier to play, They don’t have to depend on the battery life of their devices and the existence of macros and other tricks help the process, these little tricks aren’t illegal (in most games) so nobody really has a problem with it, There many Android emulators for gaming such as Bluestacks, MeMu, KoPlayer & Nox.
Android emulators
Emulators can be used for development, Android app and game developers like to test apps and games on many devices as possible before launch, the Android Studio emulator is fine for this kind of work, However, Xamarin & Genymotion are excellent for this type of use as well, There are many reasons why someone would run Android emulators on his PC, App developers can test their application before shipping it out, Gamers may want to use a mouse & keyboard on their games.
Android Studio’s emulator
Android Studio’s emulator is free, It is the default development console for Android, It offers a built-in emulator that you can use to test out your app or game, The setup is rather complicated and it can take a long time, so, developers can use this tool as their emulator for testing their apps, It supports Kotlin in case developers want to try that out, It’s too much of a pain for regular people, but it’s excellent for developers.
Android Studio is Google’s official emulator, It offers regular updates, It is a development IDE (Integrated development environment) from Google itself and especially caters to developers, It comes with a bunch of tools & plugins to help developers build & test their apps specifically for Android, but it packs fewer features in comparison to Genymotion, It is not for general usage and playing heavy games, Android Studio is difficult to set up but a favorite for many developers.
Bluestacks
Bluestacks is free, It costs $24 per month, It is the most mainstream of all Android emulators, it is compatible with Windows & Mac, It gets regular updates, The emulator can target mobile gamers, There is a stigma with Bluestacks as it can feel a little bloated at times.
It is the best Android emulator among Android users, It is preferred for gaming, It is easy to set up with no technical knowledge required, Other than the Play Store, you can download BlueStacks optimized apps from its own app store, Although BlueStacks supports keyboard mapping, it does not go well with gestures, but BlueStacks emulator gets sluggish in productivity apps.
Bluestacks 4 is launched in 2018 to fix mixed results, It comes with key-mapping & settings for many games installed, It is one of the heaviest emulators on the list, it presents the most features for better or for worse, Recent updates put Bluestacks at Android 7.1.2 (Nougat), one of the most recent of any emulators, The update to Bluestacks 4 improved speed, even on older computers.
As for gaming performance, Blustacks does not outperform many other Android emulators, you would still notice lags, especially on underpowered PC’s, BlueStacks Android emulator is based on Android 7.1.2 (Nougat), It has multiple accounts support and it has the best all-rounder Android Emulator.
MEmu play
MEmu is free, It is another of the up & coming Android emulators that seem to do quite well with gamers, MEmu supports AMD & Intel chipsets, it supports different Android versions such as Jelly Bean, Kit Kat, and Lollipop, You can run multiple instances at once for multiple games or testing features, It aims itself at gamers much like Bluestacks & similar emulators, However, it’s quite usable as a productivity tool as well.
MEmu has Key Mapping, It can set your virtual location on Google Maps, It is relatively a new app player in comparison to the others, It is launched in 2015, the MeMu Play, again, is focused on gaming, Regarding the speed, this Android emulator offers similar results as Nox and BlueStacks.
MeMu Android emulator supports Nvidia chips, Although MeMu advocates for high-performance gaming, the graphics performance is poor, MEmu is based on Android Lollipop & works top of the class with productivity apps, and if you want to play games such as Ingress or Pokémon Go, this should be your choice.
Emulation features, Testing Mobile Apps on Android Emulators, Real Devices & Simulators
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