MEmu is a free package which allows you to run a virtual Android 4.2.2 tablet on your Windows desktop.

Setup is far more awkward than it should be, not least because the developers forgot to finish its localisation from the original Chinese, but if you persevere you’ll find what looks like a good product.

The installer is compact, but that’s because it downloads the core application from a very slow server. Or maybe it’s just getting a lot of hits right now, but either way, don’t be surprised if you’re waiting for a long time.

The setup program didn’t improve our mood as it’s largely in Chinese. The buttons are in English, though, and we found our way through eventually.

Find and install whatever apps you need from Google Play

If you have a Start Menu then you’ll find a single MEmu entry with a Chinese prompt. That turns out to be the uninstaller: the program is actually launched from its desktop shortcut.

Fortunately, with all this out of the way, life gets much easier. A window opens representing an Android 4.2.2 tablet, a few basic apps – including ES File Explorer – and Google Play Store to help you find and add more.

Our first tests showed this worked well, too, MEmu running everything we tried without difficulty.

A right-hand toolbar simulates shaking your virtual tablet, rotating it, adjusting volume, taking a screenshot, or running an apk directly.

There’s also a “GPS Simulation” tab which is set to China by default, so if you’re having location-related issues then you’ll want to update that.

MEmu performed well for us, but if you have any problems then you can change the RAM its allocated, the number of CPUs or its screen resolution (although you can also run Android full-screen whenever you like).

The system has shared folders for music, videos, pictures and download, making it easy to share content between Android and the host. Apparently there’s also support for simulating multi-touch gestures from the keyboard, although this didn’t work for us on our initial attempts, and there’s no documentation to help.

MEmu’s English language installer, setup procedure and support needs a lot of work, then, but at its core this looks like an interesting product. Go take a look.