best free Antivirus best paid Antivirus

bluesfloyd

bluesfloyd

Bronze Level Poster
hi guys,
what best free antivirus would you guys recommend i use today and which best paid for antivirus should i try, i use win10 on my laptop and just use at home sending emails, buy stuff etc,
thanks for your time guys,
bluesfloyd.
 
Stephen M

Stephen M

Author Level
I think the term best paid for anti-virus is an oxymoron. If you are a Windows user then their Defender is probably as good as anything you will get.

In the past things like Avast were pretty good and in general the free stuff was always as good as paid for, in some cases paid for software could make things worse as many companies touted their PC "Tune up" dross and things like that and all they usually did was to slow things up by running unnecessary software.
 
Bastet

Bastet

Silver Level Poster
You can’t beat Defender for free antivirus. You can supplement it with Malwarebytes which is also free.
I used to use Norton but it has become bloatware & currently has many problems with its VPN judging by their forum posts.
 
ubuysa

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
This question gets asked again and again. For Windows the built in Defender tool is perfectly good enough for most people. The Malwarebyte's on demand scanner is a very good supplementary tool.
 
L

Lemon_Haze

Gold Level Poster
Windows defender is one of the worst and heaviest antivirus for the system in the world, the best option is to go with ESET NOD32. That is one of the best and light antivirus on the earth.

'' Windows Defender is the heaviest Antivirus out there and will cause your computer not work as fast as it should. See how heavy it is in the latest AV Comparative Tests here (lower bar meals less system impact = lighter) = AV Comparative Antivirus Performance Test

reference: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/windows-10-clean-installation-guide.781178/

under post #7
 
SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
Lemon_Haze said:
Windows defender is one of the worst and heaviest antivirus for the system in the world, the best option is to go with ESET NOD32. That is one of the best and light antivirus on the earth.

'' Windows Defender is the heaviest Antivirus out there and will cause your computer not work as fast as it should. See how heavy it is in the latest AV Comparative Tests here (lower bar meals less system impact = lighter) = AV Comparative Antivirus Performance Test

reference: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/windows-10-clean-installation-guide.781178/

under post #7
Click to expand...
That’s only if you’re concerned with speed over security. In independent testing Nod 32 is ranked pretty poorly. I’d take defender any day.

www.techradar.com

ESET Antivirus solutions review

Highly configurable security with some expert-level features
www.techradar.com www.techradar.com

www.tomsguide.com

ESET antivirus review

ESET offers very good malware protection with a light touch
www.tomsguide.com www.tomsguide.com

www.itproportal.com

Keep yourself protected with our list of the best security suites

With more malware lurking in the shadows than ever before, it’s critical that you keep yourself safe
www.itproportal.com www.itproportal.com
 
L

Lemon_Haze

Gold Level Poster
thanks for links, Ive been using nod 32 and smart security all my life and never had a problem to be honest, but it also depend what you prefer individually, but I think in these days it doesn't matter because as soon as you install nod32 defender is still active, it just uses nod32 as a antivirus, I used to do very clean install of windows back in 2018, I remember removing all the defender & cortana stuff and I have been using Q&Q Shut up but haven't clue it all this ''tweaks'' still works in 2020 with current windows version etc.
 
T

Tony1044

Prolific Poster
Honestly if you google various terms such as AV performance reviews you will get numerous hits, all with differing opinions of what is "the best".

Corps are all moving steadily away from third party AV/AM products and using Defender - granted one of the reasons is that it integrates with SCCM/MECM/Intune to become ATP.

Personally I have run the Windows product since the earliest days of it being Security Essentials and I've seen nothing to suggest it is any better or worse than any third party product. Ditto in terms of performance - I've never noticed it cause any slowdowns. McAfee and Norton, though... I've seen some real horror stories with them.

I will echo the others - for the vast majority of users, Defender combined with a regular Malwarebytes scan is sufficient.

My gatway/firewall also has Sophos to protect from the perimeter but that is only when I'm at home / connected via the VPN.
 
L

Lemon_Haze

Gold Level Poster
yeah, it depends on what we are used to/ needs etc. It is also important to add addons to the browser, must have addons, I am using always are uBlock Origin, HTTPS Everywhere, Decentraleyes, uMatrix etc.
 
ubuysa

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
Lemon_Haze said:
Windows defender is one of the worst and heaviest antivirus for the system in the world, the best option is to go with ESET NOD32. That is one of the best and light antivirus on the earth.

'' Windows Defender is the heaviest Antivirus out there and will cause your computer not work as fast as it should. See how heavy it is in the latest AV Comparative Tests here (lower bar meals less system impact = lighter) = AV Comparative Antivirus Performance Test

reference: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/windows-10-clean-installation-guide.781178/

under post #7
Click to expand...
Lets see whether we can lay this 'which is the best antivirus' argument to rest once and for all because everyone has their own personal favourite.

First off, Internet security is about much more than anti-virus checking. Leaving aside the equally important firewall (which Defender provides), an anti-malware system should protect critical system areas from unauthorised changes (UAC does this, which is why you need it switched on), it should also provide mitigations against common attack vectors (Defender does this, via features like DEP, ASLR and CFG), it should also protect critical user data from unauthorised modification (Defender does this too, via Controlled Folder Access). Defender also runs in it's own sandbox so that it cannot be modified. And remember, Windows 10 is built around these Defender (and other) security features, so from a performance point of view Defender will always be more efficient than any third party tool that relies on unofficial hooks into undocumented areas of the OS.

The AV Comparative tests you linked to attempts to measure (and I'm quoting their website here) the speed with which a PC running a particular security product carries out a particular task, relative to an otherwise identical PC without any security software and these tests are flawed for two very good reasons....

1. You're not comparing like for like. Product A almost certainly provides different security features to product B, so it should come as no surprise that they have different performance impacts. If the slower product provides a security feature that you need and which the faster product doesn't provide then the performance test is useless.

2. AV comparatives in particular don't show you the actual timing differences, they just group them into one of four buckets with subjective labels (the performance of the Slow bucket may well be perfectly acceptable, for example). They also don't show you the spread of timings within nor between the four buckets, and that's important. If, for example, the difference in timing between the fastest and slowest buckets in measured in milliseconds (which it probably is) then it's humanly insignificant.

You have to ask with any test like this; what is being measured and is that measurement important? For example, Newtons Laws of Motion are a poor approximation of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. It is perfectly correct to say that Newton is wrong, yet in your Earth-bound lives Newton's equations are as accurate as you're ever going to need.

Finally, and I'm not suggesting that this is the case with AV Comparatives, but you're trusting whatever report you read to be not just accurate but independent. It is, I'm afraid, all too easy for AV companies with deep pockets to 'influence' various testing platforms to make their products look better. There are examples of this kind of thing happening with CPU benchmark tests for example.

All those of us who have commented here, and on similar threads, have said that 'for most people Windows Defender is perfectly good enough'. If you can prove to me that it's not then I'll listen, but calling Windows Defender one of the worst and heaviest antivirus for the system in the world is not the best way to convince the rest of us that you know what you're talking about.
 
L

Lemon_Haze

Gold Level Poster
I see where you coming from thanks for clarification, its more about preference, like I said it is different now, this was back in 2018 so please apologize things might have changed, but for me, 'unless you really want to use a useless antivirus that is almost as good as nothing (see: AV-TEST ), has annoying definition updates that are delivered through Windows Updates rather than automatically through the app itself like it should'. I just don't like it and never did and I remember I had problems with it on my old gt73vr hence those hard words on this defender, also those conclusions come from one of the ''super tweak user'' from notebookcheck who had done some amazing work back then so I have a wee trust in that, I try to find and post a link here regarding this. This was back in 2018 so I assume a lot had been changed as I wasn't in game so sorry once again for trying to be '' smart '' but I see a lot had been changed positive for WD
 
Last edited:
SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
Lemon_Haze said:
I see where you coming from thanks for clarification, its more about preference, like I said it is different now, this was back in 2018 so please apologize things might have changed, but for me, 'unless you really want to use a useless antivirus that is almost as good as nothing (see: AV-TEST ), has annoying definition updates that are delivered through Windows Updates rather than automatically through the app itself like it should'. I just don't like it and never did and I remember I had problems with it on my old gt73vr hence those hard words on this defender, also those conclusions come from one of the ''super tweak user'' from notebookcheck who had done some amazing work back then so I have a wee trust in that, I try to find and post a link here regarding this. This was back in 2018 so I assume a lot had been changed as I wasn't in game so sorry once again for trying to be '' smart '' but I see a lot had been changed positive for WD
Click to expand...
That’s completely irrelevant these days, that was ages ago. Check any modern tests and defender comes out amongst the top for prevention.
 
Scott

Scott

Behold The Ford Mondeo
Moderator
Windows defender here. I was a HUGE advocate of Avast for as many years as I can remember. Over the past 2 years M$ has really upped their game though, to serious levels of security.

NOD32 was always a bit ropy IMO. Yes, quick and small.... but quick and small does not = secure, it means that it skips processes/steps and crucially misses things.

Kaspersky was always well thought of but I never really dabbled with it.

Avast was always fantastic but got a little bloated in the end. It was still more effective, in my mind, than Defender.... right up until they brought in the sandbox and proper kernel updates which then meant that no install could be more effective IMO.

It's a no-brainer now. Anyone that knows anything about Internet Security will tell you that Defender is absolutely first class. You would need to go to some serious lengths to beat it now (customised sandboxing, secondary system firewall, etc)..... by which point you are way past a simple install.
 
ubuysa

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
Just as an afterthought, anti-virus detection is already a dead technology. Its biggest flaw is that it can't detect a zero-day infection, and in general they only detect malware that they recognise. The solution to this problem is not detection but containment. Containment means isolating all unknown processes inside a sandbox until you can establish that they are safe. When malware runs in a sandbox it cannot impact the real machine - in addition the malware doesn't know it's isolated inside a sandbox.

The problem with containment, and the reason why I suspect it's not more widespread, is that you need a pretty comprehensive whitelist to allow all the safe Windows processes and safe applications processes to bypass the sandbox. Large parts of that whitelist could be provided by the vendor of course but there will still be an element of 'training' whilst your sandbox learns what processes are safe.

I believe that Microsoft are moving towards sandboxing, Defender already runs in its own sandbox and many browsers now sandbox individual tabs. Once Windows natively sandboxes all unknown processes the anti-virus tools we have now will be history - you don't care whether an unknown process is malware if it can't access real resources. Having 'released' all those processes you have established are safe the sandbox can be simply emptied and all the malware disappears.

There are third-party tools available now that sandbox all unknown processes, I already use one. It means that I don't really care about malware detection, although I do use Defender and I'll occasionally run a Malwarebytes on-demand scan.
 
L

Lemon_Haze

Gold Level Poster
ubuysa said:
Just as an afterthought, anti-virus detection is already a dead technology. Its biggest flaw is that it can't detect a zero-day infection, and in general they only detect malware that they recognise. The solution to this problem is not detection but containment. Containment means isolating all unknown processes inside a sandbox until you can establish that they are safe. When malware runs in a sandbox it cannot impact the real machine - in addition the malware doesn't know it's isolated inside a sandbox.

The problem with containment, and the reason why I suspect it's not more widespread, is that you need a pretty comprehensive whitelist to allow all the safe Windows processes and safe applications processes to bypass the sandbox. Large parts of that whitelist could be provided by the vendor of course but there will still be an element of 'training' whilst your sandbox learns what processes are safe.

I believe that Microsoft are moving towards sandboxing, Defender already runs in its own sandbox and many browsers now sandbox individual tabs. Once Windows natively sandboxes all unknown processes the anti-virus tools we have now will be history - you don't care whether an unknown process is malware if it can't access real resources. Having 'released' all those processes you have established are safe the sandbox can be simply emptied and all the malware disappears.

There are third-party tools available now that sandbox all unknown processes, I already use one. It means that I don't really care about malware detection, although I do use Defender and I'll occasionally run a Malwarebytes on-demand scan.
Click to expand...
thanks for your explanation man
so i can run win just with defender and malwarebytes then as an addon, will try that
 
nigpd

nigpd

Bronze Level Poster
Which? has just thrown their hat in to the ring with a report on AV software packages.

Bitdefender, F-Secure and ESET are their best buys. Windows 10 Security (Defender) comes well down their list with

Pros: We found that Microsoft Windows 8 and 10 have strong built-in security and antivirus features.
Cons: Because of the sheer amount of Windows users, Microsoft’s operating system is frequently made the target of hackers and virus creators. If Windows Defender is your only line of defence, we’d still recommend upgrading to a standalone security program.

Malwarebytes Premium also comes well low down on their list with

Which? verdict: Weak protection​

Middling-to-poor performance in most of our tests means it’s hard to recommend Malwarebytes. It’s a simple piece of software with no superfluous extra features, but its sub-par protection performance means it’s not worth it.
Pros
  • Easy to use
Cons
  • Poor protection against malware and ransomware
  • Auto-renewal switched on by default
  • Limited help

​


Read more: https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/ant...oose-the-best-antivirus-software-apUAV8K23gJj - Which?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top