Viruses are capable of a wide range of things, from stealing your hard disk space to gaining access to your private information or draining your CPU. There are a variety of anti-virus software on the market to protect your gadgets from these problems. The most important thing to do is select one that will have a minimal impact on system performance. This is a crucial aspect that all of our antivirus products are tested against. The results below are based on the amount of time it takes each program to complete an operation. For example, Kaspersky Security Cloud Free had an impact on the background of 6.6% when it was running a full scan, and ESET had a slightly higher impact of 12%.

Avira is a German-based company. Avira is a reputable company in our tests and consistently performs over 90% in all three categories – Performance, Protection and Usability (False Positives). The interface is user easy to use and comes with a variety of features including a nifty firewall and a variety of privacy tools. Avira subscriptions are billed monthly rather than for a set time period of 1-3 years. This makes it simpler to cancel your subscription or make adjustments at anytime.

A relatively new name in our tests, Essentware – which was previously known as PCKeeper is a program that runs the Avira engine behind the scenes and generally scores pretty well across the range. Its performance and user interface are both easy to use, but some issues with stability which included scanning jobs freezing that have led to a lower rating. However, detection was excellent, and a perfect run through pop over to this website the certification sets earned it the VB100 award.