Latest news with #McAfee+Premium
Tom's Guide
a day ago
- Tom's Guide
Malwarebytes Plus antivirus review
For those who just need basic antivirus protection without a lot of fuss, Malwarebytes Plus is a good option that runs light and fast. The price is far lower than most - about half what you would spend on products like Bitdefender or McAfee+ - even if this app doesn't match the advanced features of our top picks for the best antivirus software. In many ways, the biggest advantage with Malwarebytes Plus is that there are few features to configure, especially when it comes to identify theft protection. You can dive right in with a quick antivirus scan and see if a computer or mobile device has malware installed. Surprisingly, even though some advanced features like boot sector scans and a password manager are missing, there is a full VPN you can use for establishing safe and secure internet connection. Like any robust VPN client, you can select the server you want to use –- say, one in Canada or the is not in the same league as Bitdefender Total Security, the best antivirus protection you can find for the price. Both McAfee+ Premium and Norton 360 Deluxe offer far more features such as a secure browser, disk performance tools, and cloud storage that helps protect against ransomware attacks. While Malwarebytes Plus does block ransomware attacks, it doesn't encrypt files or offload them to the cloud for safe the privacy features are severely limited, basically offering only a fast scan based on your emails. You can see what problems are out on the internet, such as compromised passwords or that your Social Security number is available online, but to correct them you have to upgrade to the Identity Threat Protection app and pay an additional subscription fee. Because Malwarebytes Plus is intended as a more basic antivirus scanner, the price is much less than competing packages from companies like Norton and McAfee, which both cost north of $100 per year. By contrast, Malwarebytes Plus costs just $59.99 per year. For that price, you can protect three devices such as a Mac or Windows PC and iOS or Android devices. Three devices is about right for many users, who likely have a couple of computers and a phone. Malwarebytes does offer a family pricing plan that is $120 per month for protecting 10 devices, and also a Teams package for a business protecting 20 devices or more - for a much higher price of $519.99 per year. (A 10-device plan costs $399.99 per year.)Malwarebytes Plus does include a VPN for the price, and there are no limits on data transfers. There isn't a password manager, but you can install the Browser Guard extension for a browser like Chrome, which scans for web-based threats and blocks them in real-time. There's no email protection like you will find in the Avast Premium antivirus app. (Avast Premium has a somewhat similar pricing option -- one device for $69.99 but without an included VPN.) You won't find extensive antivirus features with Malwarebytes Premium, although there are a few interesting advanced options that pop up here and there. For starters, there's a quick scan that can be scheduled to occur regularly - offering good protection if you forget to run a manual scan. You can also use a custom scan and select specific folders. The main interface for Malwarebytes Plus shows a dashboard with a Trusted Advisor score that reflects how many settings you have enabled. For example, if you use the VPN and enable a daily scan, you'll see a higher score. That was helpful in determining whether the product is actually helping protect against threats and is not often found in other competing apps. Digging deeper, a few advanced features are available that are unique and powerful. For example, you can enable a specific protection related to anti-heap spraying (an exploit that's related to code injections). Another advanced setting helps you fight against exploits related to ASLR (address space layout randomization) which can corrupt computer memory. The VPN is not exactly full-featured. You can select a server to use, and while there's a map shown on the screen, you can't actually use it to select the server location (it's just a list). You can configure which apps, IP addresses, or ports can or cannot access the internet, and there's even a proxy server option and a killswitch to block all traffic if the VPN disconnects. One discovery with Malwarebytes Plus is that it is speedy and light. You barely notice the antivirus app is running on your PC. In repeated tests running games in the background and loading multiple apps, Malwarebytes Plus ran light and lean. A quick scan took only 26 seconds and scanned the most important files (4,142 on the same computer used to test several competing antivirus apps). Since Malwarebytes does not provide a full scan option or a way to do a boot secretary scan before the operating system loads, we were not able to measure the performance of a full scan. There's no question Malwarebytes Plus is trying to be a light antivirus tool, and the features you will find are a testament to this. There's a quick scan option and a VPN, plus a firewall you can enable and protection against ransomware and real-time exploits. Beyond the antivirus protection and VPN, plus the Browser Guard extension, there isn't a password manager to help you store logins and the privacy options are limited. In fact, the identity threat protection seems more like an ad to upgrade to another subscription, because it only allows a quick scan based on your email address. redit bureaus you can use. To upgrade to the Identity Threat Protection app, you would have to pay $9.50 per month for Advanced or $10 per month for Ultimate, both billed annually. The main difference between those packages is the amount of insurance offered and how many credit bureaus you can use. This light and lean app also has a simple, straightforward interface. It's all white backgrounds with black text, except for the main dashboard that shows a large icon for your protection score. That makes all settings easy to find without a lot of color or flair. Compared to Norton 360, which tends to highlight important options in yellow, it can be a little challenging to find the most important options in the Malwarebytes app since they seem to be just listed on the screen without any hints about which ones are most critical. Email, chat and phone support is available 24x7 and is free to all users. One unique differentiator here is that the tech support can provide remediation guidance for a specific virus and help the user resolve the problem which is included with the subscription. Not everyone needs extensive and powerful features when it comes to antivirus protection. You may just need a quick scan option to see if a computer or phone is infected, and that's where Malwarebytes Plus excels. It's not an advanced product, nor does it offer a password manager or cloud backups. Yet, the price is also about $40-$50 less than the most well-known utilities, such as Norton 360 and McAfee+. For what it offers, Malwarebytes is a good low-cost tool.
Tom's Guide
3 days ago
- Business
- Tom's Guide
Norton 360 Deluxe antivirus review
When it seems like there is a security hole everywhere you click on a computer or mobile device, Norton 360 Deluxe is a welcome relief. There are extensive security protections available, beyond what we've found offered in some of the other best antivirus apps. And, like hugely popular tax preparation app TurboTax, Norton 360 is incredibly intuitive to makes Norton 360 a top overall pick in the category has to do with the added security protection. You can do a quick antivirus scan, a full scan, and then a much deeper scan that runs during startup and before Windows loads. Ransomware protection creates a backup of important files -- even the ones held in the UEFI (what used to be called the BIOS). The more we explored the app, the more features we found, and we were pleased to find they were not just meaningless add-ons. You can protect your identity using a webcam blocker, get a warning on websites before you visit them, and even ward off botnets. Bitdefender Total Security is still our top pick for antivirus software, but that mostly comes down to value. Both McAfee+ Premium and Norton 360 Deluxe are more expensive for the core security features that all three products offer -- including ransomware protection. Bitdefender limits file transfers in their VPN to 200MB per day and the password manager is a trial version, but the antivirus features are just as robust as anything on the market -- for less. Our other gripe with Norton 360 Deluxe: It tends to ping you about upgrading quite often. We get it: Norton is a powerhouse and they have a lot to offer. But we could stand to hear about it via pop-ups for their privacy monitoring assistance and system performance apps a little less frequently. We always evaluate antivirus software according to the normal annual pricing, not the first year deals which tend to change frequently. We've even seen two different websites offer markedly different first-year pricing, so that pricing is a bit too fluid. Norton 360 Deluxe costs $119.99 per year (after the first year) for up to five devices. That's the same price as McAfee+ Essential which also protects five devices. However, we strongly prefer the McAfee+ Premium subscription in terms of pricing because it protects unlimited devices in your home for $149.99 per Bitdefender Total Security offers equally robust security protection features as both Norton 360 Deluxe and McAfee+ Premium, but for a lower price of $109.99. So what's included in Norton 360 Deluxe that makes it a compelling antivirus option? For starters, there are several differentiators that might be worth considering for $10 more per year than Bitdefender, and even compared to protecting unlimited devices with McAfee+ Premium. The security features are so extensive that it takes quite some time to find them all. Norton 360 Deluxe includes intrusion protection against botnets, brute force attacks, and file and print sharing vulnerabilities. You can block access to your webcam and start apps in a protected 'sandbox mode' to make sure they are not infected. A Safe Search feature shows you a warning before visiting any iffy website, explaining any risks involved. And, a rescue disk feature lets you generate a full ISO, or digital copy, of your disk or save everything to a USB drive. That's a long list. For scanning, we really liked the ability to do a very quick scan that only lasts a few seconds, looking for the most obvious problems. Unlike most antivirus apps we've tested, Norton 360 Deluxe then lets you choose from many deeper scanning options -- a full scan, choosing specific folders, scanning only critical files, and then doing a deep scan that runs before Windows loads. The full scan is not quite comparable to the full scan in other antivirus apps because it only took about four minutes, whereas the full pre-boot deep scan took about 35 minutes. Overall, the antivirus scanning options are more extensive than most apps. Norton 360 Deluxe also offers parental protection for your kids, up to five devices. It's somewhat basic but you can control usage time, which sites to block, and even where access is allowed. The included VPN is also powerful. It can disable your internet connection if you visit a site that's compromised and supports split tunneling, allowing some sites to bypass the VPN. One huge bonus with Norton 360 Deluxe is the Genie Scam Protection. It's an AI bot that scans for threats, warns you about websites, and can even protect you from text message threats. Genie even has a chatbot mode where you can ask it about specific websites and whether they are safe. To use the Genie on mobile to ask about text scams, you have to install the Genie app. In order to gauge antivirus detection ability, we reference the testing done by independent labs: SE Labs, AV Test and AV Comparatives. In AV Comparatives March 2025 Malware Protection Test, Norton received a 99.96% antivirus protection rate, blocking 10,026 files and allowing four through, but produced 10 false positives. McAfee and Avast had similar scoring here, while Bitdefender performed ever so slightly better. In AV Test's Jan/February 2025 Product Review and Certification Report, Norton scored a 6 out of 6 for protection against malware attacks, and produced only 3 false positives. Norton also participated in SE Labs' October - December 2023 Endpoint Security Home Protection testing, where they scored 100% accuracy in 100% protection against general and targeted attacks and showed zero response to false positives. As you might expect from a mature and well-known product, Norton 360 Deluxe is fast and reliable. We tested the app on an Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max, a Windows computer with 32GB of RAM, and an Apple iMac with 24GB of RAM. The full scan took about four minutes to scan 927K files. That's a bit surprising because both Bitdefender Total security and McAfee+ Premium took around 30 minutes and scanned 1.5M on the same test computer. The reason is that Norton does more of a deep scan before Windows even loads. Oddly, that Startup Scan (as Norton calls it) took 35 minutes and did not report on how many files it found. As for the included VPN, we tested a 150MB download and didn't notice any speed difference whether we had the VPN enabled or not. That finding is the same as the McAfee+ Premium speed test with the VPN, whereas the download with Bitdefender took a bit longer with the VPN enabled. The reason might have to do with how fast the servers are for each product. One discovery with Norton 360 Deluxe is that the 'extras' beyond the antivirus scanning, ransomware protection and included VPN are a mixed bag. Some are powerful and useful, even if advanced features require you to pay for an added subscription. For example, we liked all of the privacy and identity theft features that are included, although they are mostly there as alerts. You can scan the dark web for your email, social security number, and even your mother's maiden name to find any known privacy threats. The downside is that you'll need the Privacy Monitor Assistant add-on that costs $109.99 per year to actually fix any issues automatically, as opposed to fixing them yourself manually. In some tests, the privacy monitoring flagged the wrong person. It showed alerts for someone living at different addresses, which seems like false alarms. Overall, the fact that you have to manually delete old accounts and fix vulnerabilities could mean some users won't bother to take the time -- or will choose to upgrade to the more advanced automatic assistance. Norton also provides plenty of performance features as well. You can check whether software on your computer needs to be updated -- and that's more of a security feature than you might realize. Outdated software is often a huge hole that attackers use to breach a system.. You can also remove junk files and even speed up your computer by disabling some startup files. We bumped into some promotions to upgrade to Norton Utilities for performance boosts. That product costs $69.99 per year. For example, we found 417 broken registries on a PC, but only Norton Utilities lets you fix backups are only supported on Windows, although you can view archives from other devices. Another slight 'gotcha' is the cloud backup limit is for all devices, not per device. A 'protection promise' that says you can get a full refund if you are not able to remove a virus applies to all versions of Norton 360 Deluxe on any platform. We mentioned earlier how Norton 360 Deluxe reminded us of a tax preparation app like TurboTax. That is not a diss. Millions of people use these well-known programs, so they have to be easy to navigate for non-technical users. Norton 360 Deluxe uses a familiar, almost reassuring interface where anything important or that you have to click on is in yellow, like a school bus. Thankfully, the app also shows the most common features front and center. There is a row of buttons on the left for security, performance, privacy and identity. In each section, the most common functions are the most obvious, and then you can drill down to more advanced features. There's even a search function similar to TurboTax for finding features quickly. That makes it easy and quick to find for experienced users and hard to miss for those less experienced ones. Norton offers 24/7 support through online chat or phone. There did not appear to be a way to open a support ticket by email. You can also post in a community forum and, surprisingly, you can also contact tech support through Twitter(X) and Facebook, but that is only for general questions. The online chat starts with a virtual agent that was helpful about an issue related to cloud storage on Mac. A human agent took five minutes to respond and resolved the issue. (Oddly, the virtual bot provided the wrong answer, though the tech contradicted and corrected that advice.) Norton 360 Deluxe is one of the best and most intuitive antivirus apps around, it has extensive features to help you stay protected from security threats, from ransomware protection to botnet blockers, the price is reasonable compared to Bitdefender, and it gets props for having so many antivirus scanning modes. Though our other top pick, Bitdefender, costs $10 less, we'd say McAfee+ Premium is arguably a better value for those with many devices because it protects unlimited devices for about $40 more per month. However, Norton 360 is a thorough and feature-rich choice for those who know they have a set number of devices to protect. Our only caveat is we wish the app didn't prompt us to upgrade to advanced tools so often.
Tom's Guide
28-05-2025
- Tom's Guide
Avast Premium antivirus review
Avast Premium is a powerful antivirus program that's loaded with extra features. Compared to some of the best antivirus programs, this low-cost package doesn't throw in bloatware to make it seem like the subscription fee is worth it. Instead, you'll be able to create a backup of your sensitive files to protect against ransomware, search for sensitive files and protect them against prying eyes, and even block your biggest surprise with Avast Premium is that the list of security features doesn't stop there -- there is so much to explore in the app that it might even seem overwhelming at first. The antivirus software doesn't mess around, it also offers a highly capable security tool for protecting your email called Email Guardian. The app protects against DNS hijacking and remote desktop exploits, both dangerous and all-too-common attacks. Yet, with all of this power comes a downside: Avast Premium does not include a VPN or a password manager, features that are often included in competing products. You can still rely on the extensive security protection but will have to add a VPN and password manager if those are features you're going to need. That means Avast Premium can't best Bitdefender Total Security, our top pick for antivirus software. It's also not as capable as McAfee+ Premium or Norton 360 Deluxe. All three of those top picks include a VPN and a password manager for one subscription fee. (Thought Bitdefender Total Security has a 200 MB per day limit on the VPN and includes a trial version of the password manager.) Avast also tends to include many 'reminders' to upgrade to their VPN app, Avast SecureLine VPN, and add their performance tool, Avast Cleanup. That said, if you're mainly looking for extensive security protection, Avast Premium is a wise choice. Even with all of this security capability, Avast Premium is actually one of the lowest cost options out there, cheaper than most security packages for consumer use. To protect one device, the subscription fee is only $79.99, which is a good $30 less than most antivirus programs like Bitdefender. For protecting 10 devices, the yearly cost is only $99.99, which is about $10-$20 less than antivirus products from Norton, Bitdefender, and McAfee with a similar feature set. There's an exceptional value here if you can set aside the fact that the Premium version does not include a VPN or a password manager -- which are included with Norton 360 Deluxe and McAfee+ Premium. In fact, McAfee+ Premium does not set a limit on how many devices you can protect. With Avast, you can select the package for one device or 10. The app works with Apple Mac, Windows, tablets or your smartphone (iOS or Android). Avast includes limited privacy protection features, such as a data shield for your sensitive documents and a data shredder. For performance tools, the app only includes a tool for seeing if your installed software needs an update and a way to disable notifications while you work. That last feature is a bit unusual and seems to be mostly about not being interrupted. As mentioned, the security features are quite extensive and include a few options that go beyond our top picks in the category, such as Bitdefender and Norton 360. For virus scanning, you can do a quick scan or targeted (which allows you to select specific folders). Like Norton 360, you can also do a boot detector scan which runs before you load Windows. Digging into the app, there's a new feature to explore at every turn. You can scan your computer for sensitive information -- such as a Social Security number in a PDF or login info -- and then add extra protection to those documents by blocking access to them. The Email Guardian feature worked perfectly by scanning incoming messages, then adding a 'safe' label to emails that did not pose a threat. There's a sandbox mode to run any app in a protected environment, and a banking mode that lets you conduct financial transactions in a browser that runs on top of Windows. (You can't even take a screenshot when in that mode.) Avast doesn't stop there. You can run a dedicated browser beyond the bank mode, although it should be noted this Avast browser is available for free. The browser runs in a safe mode that doesn't allow you to be tracked by advertisers and blocks harmful sites. Avast Premium is a speedy and capable app while lacking some of the polish of Norton 360 Deluxe (though both apps are made by the same company). That straightforward design is a benefit for those who just want to run antivirus scans. In our tests, a fast scan only took about three minutes; faster than the Bitdefender, McAfee, and Norton antivirus offerings. The full boot sector scan took 12 minutes, which is about 15-20 minutes faster than the competing apps. However, Avast Premium only found about 900,000 files on the same PC used to test the competitors, which found about 1.5M files. Since Avast Premium does not include a VPN, we weren't able to test downloads using that encrypted connection. However, Avast Premium generally ran faster than the glossier competing apps, and we noticed the iOS and Android apps both operated in a streamlined way. When looking to measure how an antivirus program protects against actual threats, we compare the results produced by independent labs: AV Test, AV Comparatives and SE Labs. In AV Test's Jan/February 2025 Product Review and Certification Report, Avast scored 6 out of 6 in protection scoring where it was able to scan through over 16,000 samples in four weeks to search for malware samples. It also produced only three false positives in over 850,000 samples. In AV Comparatives March 2025 Malware Protection Test Avast scored a 99.96% protection rate and scanned over 10,026 files, correctly catching 4 compromised ones. However it produced ten false positives during this testing, much the same as Norton. In SE Labs' 2023 Endpoint Security testing, Avast produced 100% accuracy against both targeted and general attacks with zero false positives. While Avast Premium is loaded with security features as described above, the package is a little thin on extra protection for privacy and when it comes to disk cleanup tools and other features meant to make your PC or Mac run faster and leaner. It's clear that Avast Premium is focused primarily on antivirus protection, and if that is what you really need, this might be a top choice. Some of the competing apps in the space add both privacy and performance enhancing features designed to make your PC run safer and faster, but Avast mostly points you to add-on programs with a separate subscription fee. For example, you can scan for privacy problems and see the results, but to actually fix any of those issues, Avast only offers an option to buy Avast Secure Identity which costs $99.99 per year. That app does provide access to experts to help resolve identity theft problems, so it may be worth it depending on the issues you're facing. For performance-related functions like disk cleanup, you will need to buy Avast Cleanup Premium which costs $41.88 per year. That app can remove hidden files, clean up a broken registry, and even fix fragmented disk problems. It's similar to the Norton disk cleanup app. Avast Premium is a slim and functional app. It lacks the polish of a slicker and more polished app like Norton 360 Deluxe, which has a clean white and yellow look. The Avast interface looks more dated, although it was never hard to find a feature or run a utility. The interface has a black and green interface with red labels on anything important or that needs to be addressed. As such, you can find issues and solutions for them quickly. There are obvious buttons on the left for protection, privacy and performance -- although as stated above, the privacy and performance functions are limited. That means you might spend most of your time running antivirus tools. However, that may be exactly what you need and is what Avast Premium focuses on most. Avast Premium comes with 24x7 tech support by chat, and during our tests, the technicians helped resolve a question about cloud storage easily (the app does not offer cloud storage). The phone support is more for billing questions, but you can also send in a support ticket by email. Avast Premium is a highly capable antivirus package that focuses on the most serious security threats -- protecting you from ransomware scams, protecting sensitive documents, and even offering a safe browser for banking and other online activity. It's also reasonably priced,protecting one device costs lower than Norton, McAfee, and Bitdefender. In the end, Avast Premium is a good choice for antivirus protection at a fair price, but the lack of any privacy protection, a VPN or a password manager makes it less compelling.
