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Automated Testing on Browser Emulators: Pros and Cons

Ray Banks | April 29, 2025 | 10:26 am | No Comments
Automated Testing on Browser Emulators Pros and Cons

As web applications become increasingly complex and need to support а growing number of browsers and devices, comprehensive cross-browser testing is crucial but also challenging. With Safari not being natively available on Windows, web developers often resort to browser emulators to test how their web apps would perform on Safari for Windows. However, while emulators offer certain advantages, they also come with some significant drawbacks.

In this article, we’ll explore what browser emulators are, highlight the pros and cons of using them for automated testing, and discuss LambdaTest as an effective cloud-based cross-browser testing platform that helps overcome many limitations of emulators.

What are Browser Emulators?

Browser emulators are software programs that mimic the functionality of real web browsers like Safari, Chrome, Firefox etc. They simulate browser behavior by using the underlying Windows Emulator or runtime environment on the host operating system.

For instance, Safari for Windows is no longer officially supported. However, developers can use browser emulators that launch а version of WebKit on Windows to provide а Safari-like browsing experience for testing purposes.

Pros of using Browser Emulators

While browser emulators have some clear disadvantages (which we’ll discuss next), they can still be useful in some testing scenarios:

  • Quick and easy setup: Emulators are generally easy to install and use compared to configuring real mobile devices or even desktop browsers for testing. They require less infrastructure, too.
  • Cost-effective: There is no need to purchase various real devices and operating systems for basic testing needs. Emulators offer similar functionality at no additional cost.
  • Support testing during early development: In the initial stages of web app development, emulators can provide а quick way to see if something works across the most common browsers before investing in comprehensive testing.
  • Test browser versions that are no longer available: Emulator testing can be helpful when you need to test an outdated or rare browser version that is difficult to find and install as а separate browser.

Cons of Browser Emulators

While browser emulators offer some benefits, they have several limitations that can seriously impact testing accuracy and coverage:

  • Inaccurate simulation: Emulators often fail to accurately simulate the real browser’s behavior, features, and quirks. This can lead to false positives in testing.
  • No support for testing advanced CSS and HTML5 features: Many modern web technologies like Flexbox, Grid, and Canvas are not properly supported by emulators.
  • Limited device integration: Testing mobile browsers is challenging on emulators since they lack integration with device hardware like touchscreens, geolocation, cameras etc.
  • Questionable performance metrics: Browser performance metrics like memory usage, JS processing speed etc., obtained via emulators do not match real-world usage on actual devices.
  • Outdated platform architectures: Emulators rely on old runtime architecture,s so new browser features may not work as expected on emulators.
  • Security and privacy concerns: Browser emulators may pose higher security risks for apps handling sensitive data, as they operate on top of secondary software layers.

The limitations of browser emulators highlighted above can seriously impede testing coverage, accuracy and reliability. While using emulators is fast and cost-effective, the results may not accurately reflect real-world performance.

So, what alternatives exist for comprehensive and reliable automated cross-browser testing?

LambdaTest: Powerful Cloud-Based Cross-Browser Testing

LambdaTest is an AI-native test execution platform that enables you to run manual and automated tests at scale across over 5,000 real devices, browsers, and OS combinations. With LambdaTest, you can even test your applications on a Windows Emulator, ensuring seamless coverage across both real browsers and virtual environments.

Some key capabilities offered by LambdaTest:

  • Cross-Browser Compatibility Testing: This includes testing across the latest versions of all popular browsers, such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Microsoft Edge, as well as legacy browsers like Internet Explorer 7-11.

You also gain access to test across various specialty browsers, including Opera, Brave, and niche browsers such as Headless Chrome.

Mobile browser testing is also comprehensively covered with support for the default browsers on iOS and Android platforms. So you can test Safari on iPhone, Chrome on Android phones etc. Obscure mobile browsers are also available in the LambdaTest grid.

In addition to browsers, LambdaTest also provides cross OS testing capabilities with support for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. You can even test Safari browsers on Windows OS using LambdaTest’s Windows emulator feature. This diversity of browsers and OS combinations ensures your web app works smoothly across the environments used by your target audience.

●      Real Device Testing: LambdaTest has partnerships with leading device manufacturers like Samsung, Motorola, Apple etc. to offer real mobile and desktop device access for testing instead of just simulated browsers. You can choose from а vast inventory spanning thousands of unique real devices on LambdaTest to test locally hosted, privately hosted, or publicly hosted web pages and web apps.

This real-device cloud allows you to test exactly how your target users will experience your web pages and web applications. Testing on real devices under real-world network conditions provides an accurate picture of real-world performance and compatibility. Issues that may not be detected during simulated testing can be easily identified during this real device testing phase.

●      Automation Testing: LambdaTest offers in-depth integration with all the popular test automation frameworks like Selenium, Playwright, Puppeteer, Espresso etc., so you can run your test automation suites seamlessly on LambdaTest’s cloud infrastructure. This enables parallel test execution, thereby reducing the overall number of test cycles.

LambdaTest also provides smart analytics around test failures, logs, screenshots etc., to help testers and developers quickly identify and fix bugs. The automation dashboard provides debugging capabilities for each test run, along with metadata on execution times.

With LambdaTest’s automation testing support, businesses can scale up their regression suites to validate builds faster and shift left in the DevOps cycle. LambdaTest also offers integration with CI/CD tools, allowing for triggered test execution on every commit or merge.

● Powerful Collaboration: LambdaTest offers industry-leading collaboration capabilities, enabling businesses and distributed team members to come together and work efficiently. Multiple users can work simultaneously on the LambdaTest platform for real-time collaboration. Issues can be raised directly from tests using LambdaTest’s innovative inbuilt bug logging system.

This helps in streamlining bug reporting, assignment, and overall project management related to testing. Users can also share automated test runs via email or unique links with colleagues and stakeholders, allowing them to playback test execution videos. Integrations with messaging apps like Slack allow you to configure notifications for test failures, errors, or build statuses.

●      Performance Testing: The ability to benchmark the real-world performance of web pages and web apps is crucial for digital experience quality. LambdaTest provides easy-to-use performance testing features allowing you to gauge key metrics like Speed Index, TTFB, FCP, Device CPU Usage etc. under realistic network conditions.

You can even simulate geographically distributed users hitting your web app from locations across North America, Asia, Europe etc. to build а true global user experience profile. LambdaTest also surfaces easy-to-interpret web vitals metrics in line with Google’s Core Web Vitals guidelines, which quantify user experience.

●      Responsive Testing: Validating responsiveness across multiple screen sizes is crucial for modern web app development, particularly when employing mobile-first strategies. LambdaTest allows you to check renderings of web pages across а dynamic grid of screen resolutions spanning mobiles, tablets and desktops.

You can detect layout breaks, overflow content, unusable UI elements etc. with а single click. LambdaTest also offers native app testing for Android and iOS platforms, allowing you to test device gestures such as swipe, scroll, pinch, and zoom. So, mobile app behavior can be validated across phone and tablet form factors.

●      Visual Testing: LambdaTest provides advanced visual testing and analysis capabilities for web pages and web apps, where you can perform full page image comparisons across different test runs, browsers and device resolutions. This allows easy detection of front-end regressions related to UI and UX.

You can also dig deeper and analyze selected portions of а web page rather than just the full page snapshot. LambdaTest visual testing works for both desktop web and mobile web enabling pixel-perfect validation of rendering issues that may arise from CSS, network request failures, slow-running JavaScript etc.

With its comprehensive features spanning compatibility testing, real device access, automation capabilities, collaboration features, performance testing and visual analysis, LambdaTest aims to provide end-to-end quality validation of digital experiences across different environments.

Conclusion

While browser emulators appear attractive at first glance because they are fast and cheap, they have severe limitations when it comes to accurately simulating real browser behavior across many environments. Relying solely on browser emulators can deliver incomplete test coverage and unreliable results.

LambdaTest overcomes these barriers by providing instant access to 3000+ real browsers, browser versions and OS combinations encompassing the full spectrum of desktop, mobile and niche browsers running on actual operating systems. Its cloud-based infrastructure eliminates the hassles of managing testing infrastructure.

With LambdaTest, engineering teams can implement sophisticated automated testing pipelines across every digital endpoint. This helps foster high-quality web apps and consistently delivers stellar digital experiences across every user’s browsing environment.