Best Antivirus 2017 Well as we all know these days, “antivirus” is simply a word for a tool that protects your information and your laptop against viruses, Trojans, botnets, rootkits, knave security code, ransomware, and every one forms of malicious code. The best antivirus programs make it easy to stay protected. Here is our list of the best antivirus software reviews whose products combine fully-loaded features with ease of use, reliability, value, and excellent customer support. Our comprehensive reviews, comparisons, and charts will help you pick from these top providers and select the.
Antivirus software is nearly as crucial as a PC’s operating system. Even if you’re well aware of potential threats and practice extreme caution, some threats just can’t be prevented without the extra help of an AV program—or a full antivirus suite.
Antivirus suite cheat sheet
Our quick-hit recommendations:
- Best overall antivirus suite:Norton Security Premium[symantec.com]
- Best budget antivirus suite:AVG Internet Security[avg.com]
- Best antivirus suite for newcomers:Trend Micro Maximum Security[trendmicro.com]
Read on to learn why these products rank best.
You could, for example, visit a website that unintentionally displays malicious ads. Or accidentally click on a phishing email (it happens!). Or get stung by a zero-day threat, where an undisclosed bug in Windows, your browser, or an installed program gives hackers entry to your system.
We’re not suggesting that PC security software is fool-proof. Antivirus software often can’t do much to stop zero-day exploits, for example. But it can detect when the undisclosed vulnerability is used to install other nasty bits, like ransomware, on your machine. Anyone who actively uses email, clicks on links, and downloads programs will benefit from an antivirus suite.
Our recommendations strike a balance between excellent protection, a worthwhile selection of features, and minimal impact on your PC’s performance. You can read about how we test antivirus suites below.
Updated 1/02/19 to include our review of Norton Security Premium (2019), which offers just minor revisions to the previous version but remains our top pick for AV nonetheless. Scroll to the end of the article to find links for all of our antivirus software reviews.
Best overall antivirus suite
Norton Security Premium still does an excellent job of protecting your PCs, doesn't bother you too much, and has a very easy-to-use interface. Norton protection doesn't come cheap, however, at $110 per year for up to 10 devices.
Norton Security Premium is an old name in security, but it has an easy-to-use interface, highly rated protection, and a number of helpful extra features. It’s on the higher end of the price spectrum at $110 per year (your first year is discounted to $55), but you can install it on up to 10 devices. (Read our full review.)
Best budget antivirus suite
AVG does an excellent job of protecting your PC. Its interface is not great, but for $70 you can protect all the Mac and Windows PCs in your household, as well as your Android devices.
AVG Internet Security does an excellent job of protecting your PC, but it’s interface could be a lot better. Nevertheless, with unlimited installs for $70 per year, it’s hard to beat this popular security solution. (Read our full review.)
Best antivirus suite for beginners
Trend Micro Maximum Security has an easily navigable interface, great protection, and the price is right. Some of its privacy features didn't work reliably in our tests, but the cloud protection scanning is an interesting feature, and Mute Mode is a great take on the usual gaming mode feature. Overall, Maximum Security is a good choice for antivirus on Windows.
Many antivirus suites create an interface that’s as simple as possible for users to understand—but sometimes the software becomes too stripped down. That’s why our recommendation for novices is Trend Micro Maximum Security.
This antivirus suite, which provides highly rated protection, strikes a nice balance between complexity and simplicity: Four category icons at the top let you dive deeper into the suite, but if all you need to do is a scan, that option is right there in the center of interface. You can’t miss it.
Overall, no matter what you need to get done in Maximum Security, the interface doesn’t leave you with any guesswork.
What to look for in an antivirus suite
There are three basic requirements that an antivirus suite needs:
- High detection rate for malware and other threats
- Low impact on system resources
- An easy-to-use interface
That’s not all to consider, however. These days, many security suites come with extras such as a backup service for your most essential files, Android apps for mobile security, a more advanced firewall, family protection (read: child restriction) features, and the right to use the program on multiple PCs. Whether you need those extras depends on your personal situation.
How we test
First, we take a look at the interface to determine how easy or complicated it is. Does the interface make it easy to get at essential tools like PC scans and password managers, for example, or is everything buried under multiple clicks? Are there elements that look like they should be clickable but aren’t? Are alerts interactive or purely informational, and does that make sense in context?
We also examine the features on offer. Every good antivirus suite should have the basics like scanning and real-time protection, but many vendors offer elements that go beyond basic security like password managers or firewalls. We try to discern whether any of these extra features are particularly useful, or just frills that look nice but don’t serve a practical purpose.
To test the suite’s demand on system resources, we run two benchmarks. The first is PCMark 8’s Work Conventional test, which simulates a variety of workloads including editing spreadsheets, browsing the web, and running video chat.
We run the benchmark before the security suite is installed. Then we install the software, have it run a full scan on our Windows 10 test machine, and start a second run of the benchmark at the same time. Then we compare the overall scores to see if the decline between the two benchmarks is significant.
As a harsher stress test, we also use Handbrake to transcode a video before and after installing the A/V. On most home PCs, this encoding task utilizes 100 percent of the CPU. We then compare transcoding times to see if there’s any significant decline.
Our test machine is an Acer Aspire E15 with an Intel Core i3-7100U, 4GB RAM, and a 1TB hard drive. Each security suite is tested on a clean install of Windows 10 Home.
As for the antivirus suite’s detection capabilities, we’ll rely on the opinions of security researchers dedicated to this task. We’ll take into consideration reports from outlets such as A-V Comparatives, A-V Test and SE Labs.
We’ll also take pricing into account and what you get for it.
Whenever possible we’ll review security suites using a free trial to get a sense of what consumers see when they first try out a new product.
Best antivirus: All of our reviews
Looking for a cheaper option or something with more flexibility? Or perhaps you just want to see what else is out there? Below is a list of all the antivirus suites we’ve reviewed. We’ll keep evaluating new ones and adding them here, so be sure to come back to see what else we’ve tested.
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