These viruses can do a wide range of things, from taking over hard disk space, to gaining access to your personal data or draining your CPU. There are a variety of anti-virus software available to safeguard your devices from these issues. It is essential to select an antivirus program that will have a minimal impact on performance of your system. All of our antivirus software is tested against this factor. The results are based on the length of time it takes each program to complete an operation. For example, Kaspersky Security Cloud Free had a background impact of just 6.6% when it was running an entire scan, while ESET had a slightly greater impact of 12%.
The German-based Avira is well-known in our tests and consistently scores above the 90% mark in all three categories – Performance, Protection and Usability (False Positives). The interface is user friendly and offers plenty of features including a nifty firewall and other privacy tools. Avira’s subscriptions are priced on a monthly basis rather than a set 1-3 year period, which makes it much easier to cancel or alter the subscription at any time without worrying about 2nd-year renewal price shocks.
A fairly new malware detection methods name in our tests, Essentware – which was previously known as PCKeeper utilizes the Avira engine in its core and generally scores quite well across the range. Its performance and UI are both easy to use however there are some stability issues which included scanning jobs freezing which have reduced the score. The detection was satisfactory and a flawless run of the certification sets was rewarded with VB100.
