Choosing the Best Antivirus for Windows 10
Every year, there are more and more antiviruses that promise to protect users’ PCs from viruses, spyware, and other malicious programs. At the same time, popular solutions that are well-known to experienced users remain on the market, having numerous awards behind them. However, the question about the best antivirus for Windows 10 remains open. Users can get confused by the number and diversity of the antiviruses there are. Meanwhile, all the users have different security needs. So we will try to find out whether there is a universal antivirus that could fit anyone.
One of the main criteria is its performance. Antivirus performance on Windows is a sore point. It is not uncommon for a system and antivirus software to fight each other for processor resources, RAM, and an Internet connection. In a nutshell, considering the rating of antiviruses for Windows 10 in terms of performance, you can learn a lot of new names added up to the antiviruses you may already know.
According to the test results, three products from different developers immediately became leaders: Avira Antivirus Pro, Kaspersky Internet Security, and McAfee Internet Security. These antivirus solutions showed high points in each of the evaluation categories: protection, performance, and usability.
The other 8 security programs go as close as possible to the perfect performance. They are AhnLab V3 Internet Security, Avast Free Antivirus, AVG Internet Security, Bitdefender Internet Security, eScan Internet Security Suite, Microsoft Windows Defender, Symantec Norton Security, and VIPRE Advanced Security.
Kaspersky Internet Security
The consistently high result of Kaspersky Internet Security is notable. It has been retained for many months and seems not going to change. Kaspersky Lab product’s scores are high in all testing categories: it blocks 100 % of zero-day threats, as well as all known malicious programs, and demonstrates good performance in regard to the system resources. Kaspersky Internet Security slows down the operation of the standard system by only 21%, and the high-performance platform, and even less by 16%. As for ease of use, Kaspersky Internet Security does not give false positives when visiting sites and makes no mistakes in identifying reliable applications during system scanning.
Windows Defender
Windows Defender also shows notable results. During the tests, it detected all samples of the test collection, both known malware and the latest zero-day threats.
Regarding the impact on the performance of a standard and high-performance system, Windows Defender performs better than most of the available antivirus software. For example, the built-in Windows 10 antivirus slows down file copy operations on a standard system by only 1% (versus 4% on average) and by 3% on a high-performance PC (versus 6% on average).
Windows Defender does not give a single false positive when visiting sites and when scanning the reliable applications in the system. On average, tested products are 11 times.
Windows Defender comes pre-installed on Windows 10 systems, and it makes the operating system safer out of the box. Thus, there may be a reason for you to abandon third-party antivirus in favor of Windows Defender.
Bottom Line
Clearly, the antivirus must also meet your requirements based on what you use your computer for and your system. If you need more options, check out the review of the best antivirus for Windows 10 options and make your unbiased decision.