AVG is performing really well at the moment - 99.3% detection with 0 false positives. Tencent is still doing well, but just as I have experienced, there are too many false positives for my linking.
The rise in protection for Windows Defender has come at a price. March-June: 89.6% protection August-November: 94.5% protection March-June: 0 false positives August-November: 29 false positives
@malexous, Thanks for that info. One of the strengths of Microsoft's malware protection used to be very low FPs. Sad to see that changed.
Avira has recovered its ranking among the best for a few years now, a commendable performance, but Kaspersky with 0 FPs it is extraordinary indeed...
http://www.av-comparatives.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/avc_prot_2015b_en.pdf Microsoft is tested out-of-competition but it would have scored equivalent to Standard. 94.5% detection rate is fair enough for a baseline but if they could lower their FP (29) , they would have gotten Advanced. Panda Free AV did well with 99.9%; comparable to Kaspersky and Bitdefender. It would have gotten Advanced+ if not for their 17 FP (which is just 1 more than the average=16). For a free AV, not a bad deal.
I'm not ironic at all. Just look at the overall graph. It's in the middle, beaten by almost everyone that matter anything. Even bloody AVG ffs. One can still sort of justify using a free version with such results, but I can't really see anyone sober paying for it. I just can't. Sorry. I can be a supporter for more than a decade, but if we want to be real here, that's the reality. No need to sugar coat it. After all, they exist to make money. I, as a supporter am here to encourage users to use avast! and potentially even pay for it so avast! team gets the paychecks. And I just can't recommend it to people without basically lying directly in their face. That's the reality. avast! has other benefits, like no stupid launcher or dumb problems that never get fixed like broken Panda Free quarantine restoration, but protection is still the No.1 thing anyone is looking for with AV's. It's the whole point in using them.
Fair do's, but 98.8% blocked malware isn't exactly slacking. As you say, good for a freebie anyway. Plus, avast! has other benefits, modular custom installation being the main one IMO. I think combined with other strategies (additional antimalware apps, browser hardening etc) they're all much of a muchness anyway, free or paid. The reality is an AV that does its job relatively well without borking anything and is light and effective is as important to many people as results in a malware detection comparison test. Pity Panda's still broken, I had high hopes for that. I'd probably be still using it if it wasn't for the quarantine snafu. Oddly, avast! is the only AV to ever detect malware (PUP's) on a computer I owned. Ironically, I'm typing this on a laptop running Ubuntu which has no AV! lol
One thing these test does not reflect is whatever hassle and bugs the security software suite might have on your system and applications. After seeing BitDefender scoring great on AV-Comparatives for such a long period of time, it also get perfect scores at AV-Test.org and does do that bad over at matousec either, especially for 32-bit. But after grabbing it on a nice sale and installing it I started to have various awkward performance issues and whatnot going on. Everything was resolved by deleting it. It doesn't really help with having great scores on various tests if it can ensure 100% stability, compatibility and performance. Kaspersky is another suite that gets great scores, but I keep hearing about people having various kinds of issues having it installed on their systems. Trend Micro seems to score quite decent, but they had a huge face palm moment when Google's Travis Ormandy noticed some horrific security holes and exploits in their software suit especially regarding their password manager. They didn't even take it half serious when he dedicated much time reporting the issues directly to Trend Micro. The only solution to get next to perfect score from Matousec on a regular basis is Comodo Internet Security, but dozen of users do find their software suit to be very buggy and hard to configure efficiently. I guess it's darn hard to do in-depth reviews and comparisons between all the available solutions. But it's quite the impossible task for a customer to figure whichever of these products it's the wisest to chose. It's a real shame that Microsoft did not manage to keep up their work with Microsoft Security Essentials / Microsoft Forefront / Microsoft Security Center / Windows Defender. It's the one solution that has highest potential of nailing everything from integration, ease of use, performance and whatnot. But they did really drop the ball and it's protection score has been disappointingly low for quite some time now. It seems like they are putting more effort into things as of late, but at the cost of some rather high amount of false positives which is a shame. How they manage to make Windows Defender being as slow as it is in terms of scanning, and according to performance reports it actually slows down system performance more compared to several of their competitors is beyond me. The severe lack of settings and customization within Windows 10 is also rather disappointing if you ask me. I have free access to Norton Security and Symantec Endpoint som I'm currently running the former on several Windows 10 systems, and the later on Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview systems. I have no real clue on how Symantec / Norton is doing as of late as they have refused to be a part of AV-Comparatives tests and sites like AV-Test.org doesn't really provide any solid or comprehensive data. And Matousec is another beast on its own it does not include Windows Defender. I'm quite happy with Symantec / Norton compared to BitDefender and Kaspersky as it has yet to cause any system or application related issues as of yet. It does not seem to bog system performance whatsoever either from what I can tell and they offer a half-decent Mac client as well. But boy do they have some stupid tools like every security software suit seems to insist on providing these days. I do not trust their password manager one bit and I do not like how that utility works at all but it still insists on telling me about it every now and then for no apparent reason... Same goes for all this Norton Safe Web and web browser security plugins. I highly doubt they provide any meaningful security benefits whatsoever and browsing using Google Chrome gets noticeably slower by having the plugins installed and active and it tends to make site break for time to time...
Well I think that almost all AVs come with a month trial period for the reasons you have mentioned. One should really refrain from buying on a whim, and wait for the full 30 days trial to run its course, if the program has conflicts or bugs they will show up during that period. Furthermore how can you expect reviewers to test for conflicts with different systems? There are too many around, it would be a daunting task. I do agree with you though that Bitdefender and Kaspersky are more likely to develop problems on some machines than other brands...
That is excellent advice. The only way to determine how an antivirus will work on your particular system is install it and test it.
Exactly. We all want to see 100%, but that rarely happens. The practical difference between Avast and the top tier programs is very minimal.
These results vary so often year to year by a few per cent. You can never really know for sure how meaningful they are. 98-99% of blocked malware is a very good average.
I'd love to see where F-Secure's FPs are coming from. I'm in their beta program for FS Protection, which is an all-in-one for up to 10 devices, and I haven't seen a FP yet. It's light as can be and very unobtrusive, just wish there were more granular options available.
It's pretty much what you can read from https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/av-comparatives-product-of-the-year-2015.383152/ My experience: There are FPs with some random rare programs that I use. But not that much - in some rare cases only. But otherwise it's really light and I like it. Fellow beta tester here too