They are capable of doing many things, from taking over hard disk space to getting access to your personal information or draining your CPU. There are a myriad of anti-virus applications available to shield your devices from these issues. It is crucial to select an anti-virus that has minimal impact on your system’s performance. Each of our antivirus programs is tested against this. The results are based on how long it takes each product to complete an operation. Kaspersky Security Cloud Free, for example has a background effect of only 6% when performing a full scanner, while ESET had an impact of 12 percent.
The German-based Avira is a reputable company in our tests and consistently scores well above the 90% mark in all three categories – Performance, Protection and Usability (False Positives). The interface is user comfortable and has a wealth of features, including a smart firewall and other privacy tools. Avira’s subscriptions are priced on a monthly basis, rather than a set 1-3 year period, making it easier to cancel or alter the subscription at any time, without having to worry about 2nd-year renewal price shocks.
A relatively new name in our tests, Essentware – which was previously known as PCKeeper – uses the Avira engine behind the scenes and generally scores fairly well across the spectrum. The interface and performance are both easy to use however some issues with stability – mainly scan jobs freezing up which have reduced the score. However, detection was good, and a perfect run through the certification sets earned it a VB100 award.