Android apps and games available on the Google Play Store can be easily installed on Windows or MAC PC with an emulator like BlueStacks, Grey Notion, and Andy. GN is free, but its installation is not an easy task. To use Andy, your computer should have minimum 3GB RAM and a dual-core CPU that supports virtualization. It requires 20GB space for installation.
Bluestacks is the best Android emulator. It is a powerful software that consumes a low volume of RAM. It requires less than 50 megabytes of storage space. Unlike Andy, Bluestacks can be installed on machines with normal configuration.
Go through the below review to know more about this emulator.
Best Android emulator: Bluestacks review
How to install Bluestacks?
Open the official website of the Android emulator and download its setup file on your PC. For faster file transfer, use the best download manager software.
The Bluestack software’s setup file isn’t too large. Its size is just 14 MB. When you run the installer, you will be prompted to accept the terms/license. Click on the continue button and select the folder where you want this program’s files to be stored.
The default installation path is “C:\ProgramData”. Now press the next button to begin the installation of Bluestacks. The setup process will run for some minutes, and it will automatically install some Android apps and games from the play store.
Testing environment
I’ve used a Window 8.1 laptop with quad-core CPU, 8GB RAM, AMD GPU to test this emulator.
Note: If you’re familiar with the features of this software, scroll down and read the installation section where you’ll find a tutorial to install this emulator.
Interface
Bluestack’s interface boasts back, home, share, full-screen view, exit, keyboard settings buttons. The home screen is partitioned into three sections. The 1st section includes a search utility, Bluestacks settings, and recently used apps. The remaining two sections feature apps recommended by Bluestacks.
Memory and CPU utilization
Bluestacks Android emulator runs two modules i.e., service and frontend. The frontend will be active when you run this emulator by clicking on its desktop shortcut.
The service is a light-weight process that runs in the background. It will open the frontend whenever you double click on any APK file. These two processes require less than 100 megabytes system memory.
Performance
I tested Facebook, Chrome browser and super HD camera app in Bluestacks emulator. Browser’s performance was good and the camera app generated decent quality image output.
The picture quality would have been better if my laptop was equipped with a full HD webcam. For some reasons, Bluestacks automatically zoomed the pictures that appeared in my Facebook newsfeed.
This was annoying as I was not able to scroll down until the image was loaded. The pictures displayed in this emulator were of below average quality.
Most of the times, the icons and text content in websites appeared to be blurred in Bluestacks. In Android smartphone or tablet, you can easily close an app by tapping on the back button twice. But this is not the case with Bluestacks.
Instead of killing the app, Bluestacks will take you to its home screen when you click the back button. The multi-tasking ability of this emulator depends on the configuration of your PC (RAM availability and Processor’s speed). If there’s just 1GB RAM on your computer, Bluestacks will be able to run 2 or 3 apps at a time.
Conclusion
Using Bluestacks to access emails or websites is not a good idea. You should use this emulator for running apps and games that are available only on the Google play store.
Bluestacks is 100 times faster than the emulator that ships with Android development kit/framework. Thus, if you’re an Android developer, you can use it to test your applications and games.
Bluestacks is the best Android emulator.
