Viruses are capable of a wide range of things, from taking over hard disk space to access to your personal data or draining your CPU. There are plenty of anti-virus programs available to help protect your devices from the kinds of issues. The most important thing to do is select one that has a minimal impact on performance of your system. Every antivirus program we offer is tested against this. The results below are dependent on the amount of time it takes for each program to perform an operation. For instance, Kaspersky Security Cloud Free had an impact on the background of only 6percent when performing a full scan, and ESET had a slightly higher impact of 12%.
Avira is a German-based company has a good reputation in our tests. It always scores over 90 percent in all three categories: Protection (False positives), Performance (False Positives) and Usability. Its UI offers a lot of features as well as a smart “firewall” and a range of privacy tools. Avira’s subscriptions are priced on a monthly basis rather than a predetermined 1-3 year period, making it easier to cancel or alter the subscription at any time, without worrying about 2nd-year renewal price shocks.
Essentware, previously known as PCKeeper is a fairly new name in our tests. It is a part of the Avira Engine under the hood. Overall, it performed well. The interface and performance are both simple to use however there are some stability issues – mainly scanning jobs freezing and causing the rating to drop. The detection was good and a perfect run of the certification sets was rewarded with VB100.