What is the crowd's opinion of
Basic4Android?
From 3.5 billion comments
2 reviews of this app found across the web:
Why not try out B4A?
It is now free of charge. Much faster compiling than Android Studio and Xamarin. A runtime of 100 KB (not megabytes) and much more.
In addition, there is a product forum with over 100,000 registered users (and continuously growing) and excellent support. Since you know VB.Net, you will feel at home immediately.
I would suggest taking a look at Basic4Android (B4A). This is a mature tool that has been around for several years that compiles to native Android.
You do need the Java JDK installed on your Windows computer, but it uses a variant of Visual Basic as it's main coding language in the B4A IDE. So you write in VB and it compiles to an *.apk compliant file that loads and runs natively on an Android phone (via a USB cable).
No Java language knowledge required, unless you want to build some special custom Libraries for your app.
It's not free, but it's also not expensive, IMO.