The differences between Android and Windows are pretty obvious – one OS developed under the sensors, small screens and low power consumption, the second – a mouse, a keyboard, a display area of a dozen smartphones and continuous AC power. And yet there are people who want to play on Windows to Android-games. And recently has appeared another opportunity to do so – LeapDroid.

Alternatives to LeapDroid

For a start I will describe the situation about Android emulators in general. Previously, it was deplorable – the first such application was spread in the Android SDK for testing programs. And it fulfilled its task, but it could not be called comfortable.

Then there was the BlueStacks. Far from being the most optimized application on Windows, for more or less quickly the Android emulator consumed resources as a monster, and a year ago, only to run shell went minutes. Given the fact that on my PC, I could easily run Battlefield 3/4, this is unacceptable. BlueStacks 2 I, frankly, have not tried, for obvious reasons, although I will try for sure.

Another interesting decision on the launch several (keyword – several) games is the Windows Store, which comes included in Windows 10. There are, in addition to obvious applications and AAA projects like Gears of War 4 and of Forza, there are also Android-games fully ported to the PC.

Back to LeapDroid

This is – almost standard options, and now back to LeapDroid. The program is free, weighs a bit, it can be quickly downloaded and installed. First run can last for almost a minute, but it’s still faster than BlueStacks, so forgivable.

LeapDroid interface is a standard screen of Android 4.4, besides – the extra buttons on the side or bottom. They represent a maximum interest since implementing almost all the necessary functions. For example, Key Mapping button, about which is written below, or shooting of a screenshot, or downloading APK from the computer’s memory.

Emulator is recognized by the test programs as Samsung Galaxy S5 with appropriate facilities. For example, my 8 GB of RAM were limited to use only with two of which 1300 MB were already occupied by system. At the same CPU-Z recognizes the PC processor and graphics card as the render machine.

The native resolution is 1280×800 screen LeapDroid with PPI 295. It is unclear why the application uses the already outdated smartphone as a basis for the work, but there is a theory that it speeds up the work program due to optimization. It also explains a small selection of models – but it is a theory, and developers can just be lazy.

Internet and capabilities of LeapDroid

LeapDroid works quite quickly, games from the Google Play are running fast, but are not downloading very quickly, because Speedtest showed me that the ISP of connection is some unknown company in Los Angeles. Here also lies one of the drawbacks of the emulator – the absence of any options.

We have in mind, of course, the setting of Android. And if in some aspects I think it’s a good solution, which increases operating safety, in terms of the Internet and a few more things it’s quite a serious obstacle to work.

In AnTuTu LeapDroid gaining 62,849 points, in a test in 3DMark Ice Storm Extreme virtual version of the Samsung SM-G900F collected 7960 points. This is a good result – my former LG G2 in AnTuTu gained about 40 thousand, and could run almost all games at maximum settings.

Key positioning in LeapDroid

Beforehand I will say about one of the greatest advantages of the emulator – it’s the aforementioned Key Mapping. Point is that in the first-person shooters and other such projects where you need to use more than one finger Android emulators can not provide anything.

Therefore LeapDroid has a way to transfer control of the keyboard on the touch screen. Press at any convenient point on the corresponding button on the right, enter the setup menu, and set the cursor movement, WASD has, simulation and tapas on the left mouse button – you can even set up separate taps on the different buttons!

Total test result is very good. We have an emulator, gaining more points than the flagship two-year-old, with a larger screen resolution, there is a way to transfer mouse and keyboard controlling on the sensor, and there are free shooters like Modern Combat 5 and my favorite Suicide Squad Special Ops. What could go wrong?

Real test of LeapDroid

Almost everything gone wrong. I do not know for what reason, but in the real game-combat situations LeapDroid behaves like a Chinese low-cost device.

The first game that was installed – Deer Hunter 2016 – was launching for an incredibly long time, the very first hunt was really slow, like if I play through a Web-based interface with the 2G. Modern Combat 5 was pretty good, there ware almost no lags, but when they were, they were taking place mainly during the shooting, and aimed fire was almost impossible.

I ran into unexpected trouble with the “Suicide Squad” starts. The fact that has happened glitch with the mapping key – any movement of my mouse forced camera to spin sharply to the right. Actually any movement. I moved up, down, left, diagonally, even the right move, and my character was played the role of the drill from the last part of “The Matrix.” If the game had the opportunity to extract the oil, I’d be a billionaire by drilling the borehole.

This same bug, by the way, caught me at the restart Modern Combat 5. The worst thing, that I decided to try the multiplayer, and barely got out of the menu. The trouble remained in singleplayer. But in the races everything was fine – Real Racing 3 comes gently and smoothly, and I had no trouble to win my first race.

By the standard LeapDroid goes in horizontal resolution, but some applications, like the Speedtest, change the position of the screen, so you should be prepared for this. Plus, by the way, it is worth mentioning the fact that the emulator can run at once in two copies at the same time through different profiles of Google Play. This can be useful to test the great number of things, including multiplayer.

Conclusions about LeapDroid

There is no ideal in life! LeapDroid is potentially victorious application: fast in work, free, weighing almost nothing and quite versatile. Key Mapping and the ability to run two instances at once immensely pleasing. However, capacity in the synthetic benchmarks do not show the reality, so emulator is better not to use for playing to demanding games. In general LeapDroid – one of the best alternative to BlueStacks.

And for last, the bitter truth. The current LeapDroid version is the latest released version – developers completely stopped its development and moved on to the next tasks. Downloading on the official website is disabled, but the program can be found on the mirrors. Apparently, we will not see a perfect emulator Android. Unfortunately.