If you are using Android apps on Windows 11, what is your preferred installation method and use case?

I've used Bluestacks to play games... not really see a use/need for apps that don't have an equivalent on the PC, though. The games ran fine, and it was much better than trying to play them on the phone or even tablet.

WSA (Windows Subsystem for Android) is really good for Windows 11 users. Without some hacking, you're limited to apps available through the Amazon Store and it's not even a complete catalog. If you care to do more, you can install Google Play Store, and it opens up a world of apps. In my opinion, it is still early to be really useful, but consider it to be more like using apps for your phone and having them installed on a tablet. You aren't unified completely in that for some things apps use local storage, so trying to sync between WSA and a phone is sometimes a challenge, but the same can be said for a tablet. The one absolute use case I needed it for was managing my Google WiFi from my PC as Google only gave you access from an Android or iOS device.

The best value will come from developers making reactive apps which are designed for Android 12L and greater, taking advantage of the large screen potential. This is also the same driving force behind the Pixel Fold and Google's latest tablet. If Google can bring a great experience to those larger screen form factors, I by that I really mean to entice developers to consider the larger screens when they build their apps, then WSA will automatically benefit.

The last part of this is performance. WSA will hopefully continue to get better. It is okay for some things, but compared with a phone, WSA seems slow. This is partly because the CPU architecture of most Windows systems are x64, whereas phones are ARM64, but it still has room to improve. The real question is how this will compare with other tools like Phone Link, which allows you to access your Android phone from your PC. For some devices like most of Samsung's offerings and Surface Duo users, you can remotely run applications on your phone as if it were an app in your computer. This greatly improves the convergence problem I alluded to previously, but it does so by making your phone run hot, and not every device allows for this full integration.

I prefer WSA over BlueStacks, but only because it seems to better integrate with the OS. I tend to prefer Phone Link over WSA, when I have a device which is well suited for it. Mostly I use Phone Link to respond to text messages or transfer pictures from my phone to my computer. If I need something more, I have a device for that already. I hope that Microsoft continues to work on WSA though as I think WSA with Google Play Store on an ARM64 based Windows system would be incredibly useful, even moreso if WoA (Widows on ARM) blossoms into a high performance platform Microsoft is trying to achieve. The secondary value in Microsoft taking this path would be that it unlocks a new device category where you can have your Windows PC and your Android mobile phone in the same device.

Today you're probably best using something like Phone Link, but maybe you can figure out a use case that makes WSA indispensable. If you use WSA, I recommend hacking it to use Google Play Store so that you can use the applications you want.

I've used it to play noggin on the TV for my kid. It's crazy to me that outside of having an apple tv, there's no good way to stream it. Same for an exercise app my wife subscribes to. It's easier to use it streaming to the TV, so I grabbed an apk and put it on windows. Amazon's app store is available which helps a lot of your looking for an app

I use WSA with the "workaround" (which is just a windows app that uses adb to install apps into the android vm) and I say it's pretty useful for the odd app that works better on mobile (or has no desktop version, cough, threads...)