Enjoy playing Android games on your PC? Windows 11 just gave them a huge performance boost

One of Windows 11’s best features just got way better

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Windows 11has made a good deal of friends due to its ability to run someAndroid apps(via theAmazonapp store) directly on the desktop with no fuss, and things just got much better on the mobile gaming front with an update to the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA).

This is still in testing, and the new WSA version (noticed byNeowin) comes alongside the fresh preview build ofWindows 11which has just been released (build 25295, which brings in asmall but nifty change of its own that we talked about earlier).

With WSA version 2301.40000.4.0, frame rates have been increased by a whopping 40% to 50% with bothAMDandIntelprocessors. There’s also a substantial uptick for those running an ARM CPU, albeit a more modest 10% to 20% increase.

This isn’t just about smoother frame rates, though, as there are a number of other important tweaks asMicrosoftdetails in thisblog post.

That includes a fix for zooming out in apps with the mouse (or touchpad) so this now works properly, and overall improvements to reliability (with better audio input latency, to boot). Android 13 security updates are also bundled in this new version, which is good to see.

Analysis: Proof will be in the pudding, of course

A 50% boost in frame rates – or close to that – is massive, of course, and it’ll make playingAndroid gamesa far smoother experience on the Windows 11 desktop. Or it should do, anyway; remember, this version is still in testing, so certainly at the moment, things may not work as planned.

We have to take Microsoft’s word for it that gains will indeed be this big, but the fact that the company has said 40% to 50% rather than ‘up to 50%’ certainly makes it clear enough that this should represent a huge difference across the board to Android apps on the Windows 11 desktop.

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The work to improve overall stability will go a long way to making WSA a more user-friendly experience, no doubt, and having the latest security updates is another important step forward, too.

WSA has long been considered to be a big selling point for Windows 11, becauseWindows 10doesn’t have it – although recently, we’ve seen a workaround to get WSA on the latter (though the method is clunky, and theresults may well be unpredictable, so proceed at your own risk on that front).

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - ‘I Know What You Did Last Supper’ - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).

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