The best antivirus software for Windows 10 Home User

https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-windows/windows-10/

Windows Defender Protection has improved, in Windows 8 it used to get almost 0 protection wise, now it's almost on par with the others and light! Great job Micro$h4ft......finally

 

Really now in the w10 no need to install another av

 

i see 4 programs that got 100% in everything.

 

After seeing the performance ratings ESET gets there, I ask myself if it's only the Internet-Security that is so slow, or if I made a wrong choice buying it today. Would be interesting, if anybody could say something towards this. Personally, I didn't recognize NOD32 being so slow, but then again I use alternate DNS-Servers, run my Browser from a RAM Disk and don't even know how fast other PCs are. File-copying being slow I noticed though. Thought that was just the difference between HDD and SSD, but thinking of it, my SSD actually also performs sub-par.

 

I use kaspersky + Win7 Ult and are still satisfied with its performance. Tested also win 10 with Kaspersky and saw no change in performance.

 

I'm surprised McAfee is up there with the best of them. It's what I'm using right now as I got a deal for one year with unlimited licenses for $25 not long ago. I tried the various free solutions but they were either ineffective or annoying with various pop-ups/requests to purchase a "full" version.

Its scans are not the fastest, but it has found some stuff on my wife's computer that others didn't and it's not intrusive in terms of alerts or system performance.

 

Thank you for the feedback, it has come a long way in terms of performance, from being the heaviest in the past to decent performance right now.

 

+1 for kaspersky

 

From what I've seen on the antivirus testing & ranking sites, right now Bitdefender and Avira are the top 2 for consistently detecting and dealing with malware threats. Between them, it's mostly a matter of preference. I use Avira myself.

 

If only Bitdefender didn't have like 5 or so bloatware in it, it would be great. It has a registry cleaner, system optimizer, driver updater, everything that you don't want messing with your computer is there. No custom installation makes that even worse, it's an all or none package. That's even in the AV only not the Internet Security Suite or Total Security. One would think that the standalone AV would be the leanest of all other products, not in this case.

 

Avira didn't protect my system from getting infected and didn't even find several Trojans and Rootkits that existed for weeks or months. The problem nowadays just is, that there exist several types of Malware, and all Anti- viruses only protect against certain types of them. There is one very high quality article that explains a lot, like i.e. why it is advisable to use more than one Antivirus/malware tool.

The info that certain Antivirus-manufacturers btw. have friendly and good forums is worth more too me than if they have a claimed 99.1% or 99.6% at AV-comparatives, because if I'm not completely wrong, I once found a test, in which "AV-comparatives tested against the Malware-types it usually doesn't test against" , and guess what, the best program was Emsisoft with a 70% detection rate ^^ . Having support from a manufacturer though can easily save several days of work, if he can find a solution to an infection.

Things that make me think differently in that matter were the things that I read in the Bleepingcomputer-forum, and to read about how the Anti-malware-pro's get a system to a clean state again. They actually don't use any tool costing money, but therefore use between 3 and 10 different programs, and you'll find none of them in any test. Some are by Kaspersky and ESET though, and that's a big argument for me. If one thinks about it: With ESET offering a free Online-anti-virus-scan, they make a heavy investment, but like that, they gain access to a lot of infected files and there's a reason, why ESET has the highest consistency in all test-results.

I'd find more opinions of users of Kaspersky very interesting btw., as I think about testing that program as a 3rd aswell, but hesitate to gather the information which I'd need, de-install ESET, go through the 30d-payback-procedure of ESET, install Kaspersky and test it, only to find that I actually should have left that stupid Cyborg stay ^^ (information for the people not understanding this: The main page of NOD32's interface is a Cyborg saying "You are protected" . I believe this is ment to make the impression, that NOD32 is very sophisticated and "from the future" . Well, at least he doesn't ask "Do you want to upgrade now or tonight" *lol* ) .

 

let me give you a recent experience with KAV and NOD32 just as an example VS Windows Defender on Windows 10 which is much improved and with my ENABLE PUP Detections Tweak for Windows Defender.

This was not a virus test, a simple installation of a program infested with PUPs, search bars, etc that a normal user might want to install.

So I stupidly downloaded Shark 007 Codecs (yeah I know, I should've known better) and tried to install it, result:

NOD32, which has an option to enable PUP Detections by default and is very easy for the user to see during installation, caught the PUP/malware before it even started, thus, when installing Shark 007 codecs, I didn't even see prompts to install the toolbars or anything, it just installed the clean codecs with nothing else. The malware didn't even get a chance to reside in the temp files.

Kaspersky AV:, what's bad about it is, by default, it doesn't have PUP detection, so your average joe might not even know it has such a feature, I had to dig deep into the settings / Threats / enable detection harmful that might harm my computer (their way of saying PUP). It also stopped the PUP/Malware before it even had a chance to get installed and removed it from the temp files, but, again, why not have this feature enabled by default? The amount of PCs I receive that are infected with PUPs all have Kaspersky AV or IS installed but due to this feature being buried deep in the settings, none of the users had it enabled. Big Fail on Kaspersky's part IMO

Windows Defender: After enabling the above PUP detection tweak, it also did detect the PUP/Malware, BUT, i actually got the option to install the bundled junk, although since I got a warning on the bottom right corner, I was careful enough to not blindly click NEXT and didn't install it. The malware still resided in the temp files with MBAM scan got rid of after requiring a reboot.

Yes NOD32 might not be the lightest of all, but the question is, do you wanna get infected or do you want a fool proof AV? I'd rather have the peace of mind knowing not even any bad HTTP connection can touch me, even though I don't have ESET Smart Security, NOD32 has a wonderful HIPS and HTTP scanner that don't require me to have a firewall. It is a bit lighter than Eset Smart Security

 

so you recommend NOD32?

 

One should rather ask why Kaspersky chose to disable by default. Is there a reason or is it an oversight?
But anyway this is one of the better Anti-virus software today. Or I've become more cautious regarding what websites I'm on

 

The argument of NOD32 being foolproof is imo valid for an unexperienced users, but if Kaspersky would be able to offer the same amount of protection that NOD32 offers, not mattering if I need to enable it or whatever, I'd prefer it over NOD32. I'm not sure, if Kaspersky is able to do that though. Why would NOD32 have up to 6s lags sometimes? Probably because it blocks a file until it has confirmation from the cloud that it's safe. If Kaspersky doesn't check this, then it's not as good as NOD32, and as those lags are really extremely rare and can be worked against by whitelisting and creating folder-exceptions, I'd then prefer a program that offers that form of protection.

So towards the question if @Matrix Leader advises NOD32: I advise NOD32, but I cannot tell, if it's better than Kaspersky.

[EDIT]

I googled "comparison NOD32 Kaspersky" and found this link . It doesn't say much, but there's one statement that's enormously interesting imo., which is:

"ESET has superior protection, a better interface, and by far the best tech support available."

Especially the last I value extremely high and it fits with what @Matrix Leader wrote about their forums.

Take a look at this (short) video:



Virus-misses: Kaspersky 32/117 NOD32 13/117

See how this proves my point about the AV-comparative-ratings are actually useless with everybody ranking 99,x% and how they don't reflect the reality.

 

I now use McAfee Security Suite and it is excellent. I see no reason to use any other AV. I have tried a lot including Norton, BitDefender, and others, but I'll stick with McAfee.