They can do anything from stealing your hard disk space, to accessing your private data and draining your CPU. There are plenty of anti-virus software available that can help protect your gadgets and avoid such issues. It is important to choose one that is not likely to have an impact on system performance. This is the primary factor that all of our antivirus products are tested against. The results are based on the time it takes each program to complete an operation. For example, Kaspersky Security Cloud Free had an impact on the background of only 6.6% when it was running a full scan, and ESET had a slightly greater impact of 12 percent.

Avira is a German-based company has a great reputation in our tests. It has consistently scored above 90% in the three categories of Protection (False positives), Performance (False Positives) and Usability. Its user interface is friendly and offers plenty of functionality including a smart firewall as well as a variety of privacy tools. Avira’s subscriptions are priced on a monthly basis, rather reference than a set 1-3 year period, which makes it simpler to cancel or modify the subscription at any time without worrying about 2nd-year renewal price shocks.

Essentware, previously known as PCKeeper, is a relatively new name for our tests. It runs the Avira Engine underneath the hood. Overall, it performed well. Its interface is easy to use and its performance was satisfactory this month, though there were a few issues with stability – mainly with scan jobs locking up have lowered the rating. The detection was good and a flawless run of the certification sets resulted in VB100.