Apex Legends has become the latest sensation in the mobile gaming space. Topping the iOS App Store charts in more than 60 countries, the game has already garnered a massive userbase. While players are enjoying Apex Legends Mobile on a variety of smartphones, be it a mid-ranger or a flagship, many have been waiting for emulator support to arrive. And well, that day is finally here. You can now play the latest battle royale mobile game, Apex Legends Mobile, on your PC with ease. We have detailed two popular apps to play Apex Mobile on your Windows computer, along with a surprise performance boost in one of them. So without further ado, let’s dive in.
We have explained how you can install Apex Mobile on your Windows PC using Tencent’s Gameloop emulator and Bluestacks 5. Further, we compare the performance of the mobile game on both platforms.
- Install Apex Legends Mobile using Gameloop on PCInstall Apex Legends Mobile using BlueStacks 5 on PCApex Legends Mobile Performance: Gameloop vs BlueStacks
Install Apex Legends Mobile using Gameloop on PC
This is the easiest method to install and start playing Apex Mobile on your PC. Both the BR game and this emulator, Gameloop, have been made by China’s Tencent. The latter has adapted the game for its emulator to deliver the best and most optimized performance to users.
Next, open the downloaded EXE file and click the “Install” button.
Once the Gameloop emulator is installed, you need to click “Start” to power it up. You don’t need to log into the emulator and can simply head to the Apex Legends Mobile listing from the home screen. Click the “Install” button to start downloading the mobile game.
Depending on your internet connection, it will take somewhere from 5 – 20 minutes to install Apex Legends Mobile on your PC. Once the game is installed, you can click the “Open” button on its listing to start playing.
Yeah, one of the highlights of Gameloop is that you get the 120 FPS frame rate option in Apex Legends Mobile. The performance will, however, vary based on your hardware. I was getting an average of 95 FPS during my gameplay.
Install Apex Legends Mobile using BlueStacks 5 on PC
We wanted to present you with two options to install and play Apex Legends Mobile on your PCs but kept running into one problem or the other with BlueStacks 5. First, we encountered the “unable to run on this device” error, which was resolved by switching the device variant from the settings.
Now, if you are ready to be faced with one (or more) of these errors and prefer BlueStacks over Tencent’s Gameloop emulator, follow the steps below:
Visit this link and click on the “Play Apex Legends Mobile on PC” button to download the BlueStacks 5 emulator.
Next, open the downloaded EXE file and click the “Install now” button in the BlueStacks 5 installer.
Now, instead of opening the emulator, you need to open the “BlueStacks 5 Multi-Instance Manager” from the newly added shortcut on your desktop.
Here, click the “Instance” button at the bottom left corner of the screen. Then, select “Fresh instance” in the pop-up that appears.
Next, copy the settings shown below if your PC can handle it, and click on “Download” to create a 32-bit Nougat instance in BlueStacks 5. Also, create a desktop shortcut for the newly created instance as we will need to open it with admin privileges to avoid any errors.
32-bit Nougat instance settings create desktop shortcut for new instance
From the BlueStacks 5 homescreen, click on either the Play Store icon or the Apex Legends Mobile icon under the “Popular Games to Play” section.
The emulator now requires you to log into your Google account to download Apex Legends Mobile on your PC.
Once you have logged in, search for Apex Legends Mobile in the Play Store and hit the “Install” button. It will take around 10 – 15 minutes to download the game, depending on your internet speeds.
After the game is installed, open and log in with your preferred method. You can now jump into the action and start taking down others to become the Champion in Apex Legends Mobile. Bluestacks may require a restart after installation to adjust the graphics driver settings.
With the installation process for Gameloop and BlueStacks out of the way, it’s time for us to talk about the game’s performance on both. If you have watched the gameplay videos attached above, you already know that the performance of Apex Legends Mobile on Gameloop on a PC is far superior compared to BlueStacks. And well, the obvious reason for that is optimization.
The biggest highlight of Apex Legends Mobile on Gameloop is that it includes a dedicated 120 FPS frame rate option. It even supports up to 2K resolution if you have compatible hardware. On the other hand, as stated above, BlueStacks caps at Ultra (60FPS) frame rate, the same as most mobile devices. It does not even support the 90 FPS option in Apex Legends Mobile found on select iPhones, which is a major disappointment.
Moreover, the keymapping in Gameloop is more versatile and feels easier to use when you have to interact with items. BlueStacks felt a bit clunky to me, and I had to remap some keys a couple of times in the middle of a match, as shown in the gameplay footage above. Moreover, the number of errors I had to resolve to be able to install Apex Legends Mobile on my PC via BlueStacks was nothing short of a nightmare.
