They can be anything from the theft of your hard disk space to accessing your personal information and draining your CPU. Thankfully, there are many anti-virus software available that can help protect your devices and prevent these types of problems. The key is to choose one that has the least impact on the performance of your system. This is one of the main factors that all of our antivirus products are tested against. The results below are basing them on the length of time it takes each program to perform an operation. Kaspersky Security Cloud Free, for example has a background effect of 6% when scanning the entire system, while ESET had an impact of 12 percent.

Avira is a German company is a reputable brand in our tests. It has consistently scored above 90 percent in the three categories of Protection (False positives) and Performance (False Positives) and Usability. Its interface is also user comfortable and has a wealth of functions, including a clever 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.

Essentware was formerly known as PCKeeper, is a relatively new name in our tests. It runs the Avira Engine in the background. Overall, it performed well. Its performance and user interface are both simple to use however, a few go to this site stability problems – mainly scanning jobs freezing – have lowered the rating. The detection was satisfactory and a perfect run of the certification sets earned VB100.