10 Best Android Emulators for Windows 7/8/10 and Mac!

What is an Android Emulator?

Before we get down the list of best Android emulators, let us understand what emulation is. The main process of emulation with respect to computers is to imitate or replicate the Android apps and Games on Windows PC, Laptop or Mac. Operating systems which are supported by emulators are Windows 11, 10, 8, 7.

For all those who love using Android apps and playing games on a larger screen and gives you the feel of enjoyment and comfort, Android emulators are the solution for you. At present, there are lots of options available that lets you download and install your favorite apps and games on your computer or laptop.

How Helpful Are Android Emulators?

Some folks must be thinking, apart from playing games what GOOD these Android emulators will help in? Well, the possibilities are endless here. The developers, coders and programmers can test and debug their applications without even installing the app on an Android device.

Users with a limited amount of resources on their Android devices, like having a very less free RAM or internal memory on their smartphones won’t be able to enjoy certain apps and games on outdated devices. And this is where an Android emulator comes handy!

How Does an Android Emulator Work?

An Android Emulator basically provides the apt environment required for the purpose of letting you run numerous Android apps/games on your computer. Without the installation of an Android emulator on your system, you will not be able to install or run any of the Android apps or games on your PC and Mac. After the installation, you can easily search for the apps and games and install them on your system.

Best Android Emulators!

As mentioned above, lots of new Android emulators have come up in the market and it can be a tough task choosing the right one for you from them; reason being if you have not chosen the right one it may slow down your system to a large extent.

Just in case you are getting confused with which emulator to use and which not to, we have shortlisted the best Android emulators available in the market for you. And to ease out more for those who are working on different platforms we have provided you Android app players for PC as well as Mac. These days, Pokemon Go is not working on emulators, so better try the best Android emulator in the list given below now!

Top 10 Android Emulators for Windows 11, 10, 8, & 7

1. Bluestacks
2. Nox App Player
3. LeapDroid
4. Andyroid
5. Memu
6. GenyMotion
7. Droid4X
8. WindRoy

So these are the 10 best Android emulators for PC we are going to list today! Let me not make you wait anymore and get straight to the point! Here you go with Bluestacks first.

1. Bluestacks

Without any second thought, I can assure you that Bluestacks is the finest Android emulator you will ever use! It is definitely one of the best Android emulators for running Android apps and it is available for both Mac and Windows as well. The latest version of this emulator is Bluestacks N which is still in beta phase!

A virtual copy of Android OS apps is created on the guest OS. It uses a unique technology called “LayerCake” that enables you to run Android apps on your PC without any external Virtual Desktop Application. Installing it you can enjoy your games and apps like News Feeds, Social Network on a larger screen. It is free to download and install and the only thing of concern is to run Bluestacks without any glitches a decent graphics card must be installed in your system already.

2. Nox App Player

It can be considered as a Bluestacks alternative and has made a new entry to the list and its main target audience is gamers. It has utilities and additions such that keeping in mind the needs of gamers to control their games using their keyboard and mouse. The features of this emulator are comparatively stable and reliable. Also, a plus point in its entire good list is- it is free of cost. You can read a detailed review of Nox Player here.

3. Leapdroid

Leapdroid is one of the newer alternatives to the preexisting ones and rather an excellent option. It utilizes a virtual machine so that an Android instance is created on your PC. It is considered as one of the sleeker options in the list coz of the tweaks and the optimizations been made. It runs smoothly, boots quickly, and scores impressively well on gaming benchmarks. It has a fairly active development team. It provides support for over 98% of apps and games.

4. Andyroid

One more popular Android emulator would be Andyroid. The feature of controlling the screen with your mobile first came in Andyroid emulator and was then available in the other emulators too. In quite short time Andyroid impressed with its increasing and good market share. You can install any application through your desktop browser making it its best feature.

You should have a Virtual box already installed on your computer to install the Andyroid Emulator. This emulator was designed mainly with gamers as the target audience.

5. Memu Play Android Emulator

If you want to enjoy great Android experience Memu is advisable as it has great performance with Windows PC. It is a product of Microvirt Co. Ltd and is expected to reach greater heights regarding its features and performance. MEmu Android Emulator supports multiple hardware configurations with no such cause of worry with respect to compatibility issues. It is a nice alternative when thought of gaming and productivity.

Trending: Pokemon Go for PC Download

6. GenyMotion App Player

Genymotion is considered as one of the best Android emulators available in the market for both PC and Mac and also known as the apt platform for developers for testing their apps and games. You won’t be facing any glitches or difficulties while running android apps and games on your system using GenyMotion. For a downloading purpose, you need to create an account and confirm your email address so that you receive the download links to get it on your system.

7. Droid4X

Next is Droid4X which is quite an interesting alternative to work on. It runs in a similar fashion as Andy or Amiduos with round about the same performance and productivity as them. It is under continuous improvement with frequent upgrades and the interesting feature of it would be the add-ons. It runs on both Windows and Mac OS x platform. It runs on the machine as a guest operating system.

Interesting Read: How to Play SNES Games using SNES ROMs

 

8. Windroy Emulator

It can be considered as one of the best Android Emulators among the above-listed Emulators. It completely runs using the Windows Kernel and does not require any external virtual box support like Bluestacks. In use, it is quite light-weight and handy too. Note that the directory path where you intend to install Windroy must not contain spaces.

9. AMIDuOS

AMIDuOS is another android emulator tool that lets you run Android apps and game on your PC. The USP of the emulator is the ability to run the Android 5.1 Lollipop version. But for some weird reasons, a jellybean variant is also available for download. AMIDuOS also lets you use the rooted mode so that you can get the best out of the Android ecosystem and it lets you choose from the amount of RAM you want to allocate to the emulator.

As per the hardware profile is concerned, it supports Gamepads, and external hardware GPS also so that you can play games without any hassle. Make sure to enable the Virtualisation by going to the BIOS settings before installing the emulator.

10. Remix OS Player

So the last emulator on our list of the Best Android emulators is the Remix OS Player. This emulator is based on the Marshmallow Android System Framework and claims to be the only one who offers you the latest platform.

The Remix OS Player got popularity in the last year when it was launched as a beta program. The main advantage of the Remix OS player is that you can install this emulator and you can run Windows and this emulator side-by-side. It is like running two separate versions of Windows on the same machine.

The major drawback about the Remix OS player is that it lacks the support for AMD based processors. Also, your BIOS must comply with the virtualization mode so as to let the emulator run smoothly. The Remix OS player is made with the intent to play all the amazing games on the Android platform, so it is pretty much an essential for all the gamers out there.

You can download the program directly from its official website and install it onto your PC. The detailed guide has also been posted on our website, and you can also refer the developer’s website also.

Minimum System Requirement to Any Android Emulator

It’s often observed that users complain about Bluestacks not working or Nox App Player stuck at 99% and many more. The reasons may be many but one common issue is their system might not have enough resources to play the Android emulator on PC. To ensure that your Android emulator works fine on your Windows PC or Mac, you need to have below given minimum system requirements on your PC:

• 2GB RAM (1GB Minimum)
• 3 GB Hard disk space (1GB Minimum & 3GB Maximum)
• 2.2 GHz Processor
• 2GB Video memory (Minimum 1GB & 2GB Maximum)

So these are few system requirements which must be available for your Windows 11, 10, 8, & 7 or laptop to run such Android emulators smoothly.

Want to Develop an Emulator for PC?

Well, the sole idea of enlisting all the Best Android emulators in this article was to foresee all the possibilities of improvements (if any) in this segment or not so that our readers can choose the Best Android emulators for them. But what if you aren’t satisfied with any of the list mentioned above? What if you aren’t getting what you are thinking about? Well, we’ve got a BONUS for you. You can build your android emulator using a program called VirtualBox.

Virtualbox acts as a virtual machine that can be installed on a PC and have the capabilities to install any operating system files on it. So, it is an OS inside another OS, makes me remember the ‘Inception’ movie, sighs!

Make sure to follow the guide that is available online that may help you to understand the procedure of installing any OS on the Virtual machine (VirtualBox). Also, you have to download some compatible Android platform image from Android-x86.org, so that you can install the Android ecosystem on the Virtual machine.

Which is the Best Android Emulator?

With the rise in the number of apps that we people are using on our smartphones, there are some of us who also wants these apps and games to be accessed on a Windows machine. Let’s face it smartphones have a very limited battery, and when it comes to playing games, we tend to get irritated with the huge amount of battery drain on our smartphones. So, why not install these apps and games directly on the PC without any hassle? There are several ways to do that; the perfect one is using an Android emulator.

We hope this article of best Android emulators was of use to you and now you can fairly decide which emulator to use. You can download and install any of the above mentioned Android app players to take your gaming experience to a new level. If you come up with any other latest emulator or doubts & queries feel free to comment below!