While it's true that you can't get something for nothing, this
year's crop of free antivirus offerings proved that you can come
damn close. We reviewed all of the major free AVs for 2011, and
found several that provide great performance and a solid feature set
- all for the incredibly low price of diddly-squat!
When making our year-end judgments regarding the
best free antivirus
platform, we weighed the following factors:
- Effectiveness. An
anti-virus program that doesn't successfully defend your machine
against the most common viruses isn't worth the bandwidth. Even
if a program had a clumsy UI and few features, we tended to give
it high marks if it performed its core job well. Effectiveness
was calculated based on the professional assessments of
independent anti-virus testing labs.
- Features.
Obviously, the more goodies you can get for free,
the better! But we also rated applications based on whether
they were user friendly, and easy to install and remove. For
free AVs, we also weighed the "nag factor," which is how
frequently a vendor prompts users to upgrade to their paid
products. Platforms with higher nag factors received big
thumbs-down.
- Virus Scan Speed and Rate of
Virus Definition Update. A good anti-virus platform
should do its core job efficiently, and maintain its virus
definition database to track the latest threats.
- Performance. Virus
scanning speed is only one element of overall performance. We
measured each free anti-virus platform against
eight separate performance metrics to see which ones kept
you safe without bogging down your system.
- Help & Support.
Since these are free packages, we didn't expect much in the way
of live support, so we focused instead on inline assistance and
the quality of the help manuals.
Effectiveness
Three free applications could claim excellent effectiveness against
malware and other threats.
Avira took top position with a 13/15
ranking. In the effectiveness tests conducted by AV Comparatives,
Avira beat out its name-brand competitors. It also garnered a
perfect score from Virus Bulletin, which tests anti-virus platforms
against all known viruses in the wild. Claiming the next two stops
were
Avast! and
BitDefender, both weighing in at 12.5/15.
By contrast, we'd caution users to steer clear of
ClamWin,
Digital Defender,
and
Rising, all of which netted a miserable 3/15. In Virus
Bulletin's testing,
Rising failed to detect over 2,000 known viruses
(zoinks!).
ClamWin's scores are low because the platform hasn't even
been tested by the major independent labs, and was last tested by AV
Comparatives back in 2007 (which is about 47 years in Internet
time).
Features
Almost all of the anti-virus vendors who released free AVs use them
to advertise their commercial AV products, so we can forgive these
folks for not wanting to give away the store. That said, we were
blown away by
Avira and
AVG. Both companies understandably left out
their Firewall and Anti-Spam components, but kept nearly every other
feature included in their commercial offerings. In particular,
Avast! stands out for including advanced features like AutoSandbox
and WebRep - tools you almost never find outside of a commercial
product.
The only products that came close to
Avast! and
AVG in this category
were
Kingsoft and
Rising, both of which scored 8/10.
Once again,
ClamWin finds itself at the bottom of the heap. This
open source anti-virus offering contains few features. It also comes
packaged in an interface that everyone but Linux kernel programmers
will find unusable.
Digital Defender took the next-to-last spot due
to its lack of features, and its heavy feature lockdown.
Nag Factor: Since some users
hate product pitches with an overwhelming passion, we're calling
this out in a separate ranking. By far the best product in this
category came from Microsoft, whose
Security Essentials contains no
pitches for upgrading to a commercial product. (Its commercial
anti-virus offering, Forefront, is geared toward corporate users.)
Rising and
KingSoft were also nag-free. The freeware
ClamWin also
earns kudos for its absence of nags.
Avira and
Comodo were relatively nag-free - more so that
feature-leaders
Avast! and
AVG, which both prominently remind you
that you're using an inferior release. In general, however, we found
that the rich offerings from
Avast! and
AVG offset the nags.
The worst nagger was
PC Tools; their free AV is essentially one
long, exhausting ad pitch.
Digital Defender took a close second.
Both platforms include links to multiple features that can't be
accessed unless users upgrade.
Virus Scanning
Wow! If you're in need of a free AV that runs efficiently and keeps
its virus definitions up to date, you have no less than four stellar
choices.
Avira,
Comodo,
KingSoft, and
Rising all scored 4/5 in this
category. Another four -
Avast!,
AVG,
Panda, and
BitDefender - came
in close behind at 3.5/5.
Again, the loser here is
ClamWin, whose 2/5 rating was unrivaled.
Only
Digital Defender managed to come close, netting a 2.5/5 for its
below average scan speeds and meager definition updates. (Increasing
the number of daily updates requires - surprise! - purchasing a
commercial license.)
Performance
Surprisingly,
ClamWin finished first in several key performance
metrics, including Reboot Time, Subsequent Application Launch, and
File Conversion Time.
ClamWin also finished #1 overall in our System
Impact Score. The downside:
ClamWin is likely so efficient because
it has so little to offer. We were more impressed with
Avira, which
tied
ClamWin with a performance rating of 8.5/10, and came in second
to
ClamWin in our overall System Impact Scoring.
Avira's didn't
outperform any of its rivals in any specific category, but overall
it performed as well as
ClamWin, even though it comes loaded with
more features.
Both
Rising and
Avast! deserve kudos for taking second place with
8/10 performance rankings. These are impressive numbers, considering
that both programs deploy more features than either
Avira or
ClamWin.
Unfortunately, the worst performer in this category was the
increasingly popular
Microsoft Security Essentials. Its 3.5/10
ranking derives from its bloated installation size (rated #12 out of
12 programs), its large memory consumption (#11 out of 12), its
rotten subsequent scan speed score (#11 out of 12), and its impact
on file conversion times (#10 out of 12). Overall, Security
Essentials had the worst impact on system performance of any free AV
as judged by our System Impact Score.
Digital Defender secured the
next-bottom rung, earning a 4/10 for its memory greed (#12 out of
12!) and poor initial scan speed (#10 out of 12).
Help & Support
Again, because we didn't expect much from any of the vendors in this
category, we were impressed whenever an AV went above and beyond the
call of duty. The top spot belonged to
Security Essentials, which won a
perfect 5/5 for its well-thought-out help system and free e-mail
support. Only
Avast! and
Panda managed to come close to this high
water mark.
Avast! gained points for its free e-mail support and
active user forum, and
Panda impressed us by producing a short
animation that pitches the benefits of anti-virus protection without
resorting to geekspeak.
Tying for last place:
ClamWin and
Digital Defender, neither of which
provided much of anything in this category.
Conclusion
When the smoke cleared, we had an undisputed champion.
Avast! Free Anti-Virus 6
was the only free AV to win an "Excellent" (4-1/2 star)
rating from AntiVirusWare.com. The application's solid performance
scored coupled with its outstanding feature set make
Avast! an easy
choice for most end users.
Avira came in close behind in our #2 slot
(4 stars, or "Very Good").
AVG Anti-Virus Free 2011,
Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0,
and
Panda Cloud AntiVirus Free Version 1.4 all earned ratings of "Good" (3-1/2 stars).
If you haven't already guessed,
ClamWin Free AntiVirus Version 0.97
and
Digital Defender Antivirus Free 2.1 earned our worst ratings of
the year. We gave both applications a "Below Average" rating (2
stars). With so many superior offerings on the market, there is no
reason ever to install either program.
Round-up Scores:
|
Effectiveness
|
Features
|
Virus Scanner
|
Performance
|
Help & Support
|
Avast! Free Anti-Virus 6
|
12.5/15
|
9.5/10
|
3.5/5
|
8/10
|
4/5 |
Avira AntiVir Personal Edition 10.0
|
13/15
|
6/10
|
4/5
|
8.5/10
|
3.5/5
|
AVG Anti-Virus Free 2011
|
11.5/15
|
9.5/10
|
3.5/5
|
5.5/10
|
2.5/5
|
Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0
|
11.5/15
|
7.5/10
|
3/5
|
3.5/10
|
5/5
|
Panda Cloud AntiVirus Free v1.4
|
10/15
|
6/10
|
3.5/5
|
6/10
|
4/5
|
BitDefender Free Edition 2009
|
12.5/15
|
5/10
|
3.5/5
|
5.5/10
|
3/5
|
Free Comodo AntiVirus 2011
|
7.5/15
|
7.5/10
|
4/5
|
6.5/10
|
3.5/5
|
KingSoft Free Antivirus
|
5/15
|
8/10
|
4/5
|
7.5/10
|
2.5/5
|
PC Tools AntiVirus Free 2011
|
11.5/15
|
5.5/10
|
3/5
|
4/10
|
2/5
|
Rising AntiVirus 2011 Free Edition
|
3/15
|
8/10
|
4/5
|
8/10
|
1.5/5
|
ClamWin Free AntiVirus v0.97
|
3/15
|
3.5/10
|
2/5
|
8.5/10
|
2/5
|
Digital Defender Antivirus Free v2.1
|
3/15
|
4/10
|
2.5/5
|
5/10
|
2/5
|
Article last updated July 23, 2011.
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