The best simulator is a cold airplane. Sit in the parked airplane and practice your flight including moving all controls as appropriate. This is IMO a far superior method of learning checks and flows and practicing actions because you develop muscle memory by virtue of practicing in the exact actual environment you will be using the skills.
I recommended this to all students I taught. The ones that got serious about pre lesson preparation all completed their training in minimum time.
I always asked my PPL students if they used home flight sims. If they answered yes then I told them to stop.
While I am sure there is somebody out there that completed their training faster because of the use of a flight sim I can only say I have personally never seen this and talking to other instructors I have never met one who thought use of a home sim was a good idea for PPL training.