In each test, antiviruses that score high enough receive the top product stamp by the company. To do this, they have to get at least one score of 17.5 out of 18, that is, 6 points in all categories, except in one that can obtain 5.5.
The Top Product seal was something reserved for a few antiviruses, but the vast majority have been improving their protection over the years. Almost all those analyzed usually obtain it, but this month there are six that do not. Among them, there are two of the most used free antivirus on the market.
Avast and AVG do not have the best protection
We talk about Avast and AVG. Both antiviruses belong to Avast, the same company, and are two of the most widely used on the market due to their good protection and free of charge. In their payment method they offer other additional protection functions, but in terms of antivirus, the company offers it for free.
The use of these free antiviruses has been declining in recent years due to the excellent level of performance and protection they offer Windows Defender. And in fact, install AVG or Avast It will protect us less than leaving Windows Defender activated by default, so it is better to look for alternatives to Avast.
That is what allows us to see the analysis you have done AV Test, where Windows Defender obtains a 6 in all categories, and therefore the Top Product seal. However, both Avast and AVG score only 5.5 points in the protection and performance categories, so they don’t get the seal.
In the test, AV-Test used 330 zero-day malware samples and 18,870 samples of known malware. Before the known one, both antiviruses protected in 100% of the occasions. However, in December, they protected against the 99.3% of threats. That implies that there were at least two malware attacks that were not in their database. In the case of Defender, the protection was 100% both times.
In terms of performance, both antiviruses consumed more resources than average of the industry when browsing popular web pages, slowing down the load by 22 and 28%, compared to the average of 16%. The figure contrasts with 4% for Microsoft Defender, although the latter made some programs take a little longer to install.
List of the best and worst antivirus
The list of antiviruses with the Top Product certificate is as follows:
- AhnLab V3 Internet Security
- Avira Internet Security for Windows
- Bitdefender Internet Security
- BullGuard Internet Security
- ESET Internet Security
- F-Secure SAFE
- G DATA Total Security
- Kaspersky Internet Security
- Malwarebytes Premium
- McAfee Total Protection
- microsoft defender
- NortonLifeLock Norton 360
- Total VA
- VIPRE Security Advanced Security
In the case of those that must be avoided, we find some common ones such as K7 Security or eScan, which are the ones that obtain the worst security score. The complete list of those to avoid is as follows:
- Avast Free Antivirus
- AVG Internet Security
- K7 Computing Total Security
- Microworld eScan internet security suite
- PC Matic
- Trend Micro Internet Security