Question about Genymotion!

Yes, Genymotion is way faster that the standard emulator. You should definitely try it out if your SSD has the space for it.

Hey Luke!

I thought I'd just post my opinions on this here as well if you don't mind :)

I definitely recommend using a third-party emulator over the one built into Android Studio as for me, if I can't get a third-party emulator working then I'll resort to using my device - I can't stand waiting for the built-in emulator to load! I's incredibly slow for me...

Anyhow, I originally started using Genymotion which is a great choice - it's superfast, easy to use and has preset devices that you can choose from. I then upgraded to Windows 10 and ran into a few issues with Genymotion which causes it to be temperamental so, I moved over to my next choice...

I have recently started using the Visual Studio Android Emulator now, but this is only compatible for Windows systems so sadly you can't use it on a Mac but I thought I'd still post it here for any other users coming across this post. I found this emulator even faster than Genymotion and it's also got all of the same tools (Which are free for everyone! There's no premium license!). This is now my main choice for emulator, primarily for the speed. Note: If you already have Genymotion, disable the Virtualbox drivers in Device Manager else you may run into issues.

Now you also mentioned about using an actual device. In most cases, this will be the fastest option (It does depend on the device, however). When I build apps that have complex rendering, I often will use my actual device so that I get a real feel for how it runs. The only reason I don't always use my actual device is because I build a lot of apps so it cloggs up my phone having lots of test apps and also, I don't always have my cable next to me so often just start an emulator up because it's faster than me going and getting my cable (I know, how lazy).

Hope these may help anyone who's looking into using something other than the default emulators :)

I personally find the default emulator to be perfectly fine IF you can get HAXM working. However, if you are on Windows, HAXM requires an Intel CPU so is not available on every system.

Also, if you have an available physical device, I'd recommend at least testing your app on it before you publish your app to any stores, just as a sanity check.