jeudi 7 septembre 2017

Avast Pro Antivirus Review


Share.

Very good, but so is the free version.

IGN is reviewing all the biggest antivirus programs all week long. They’re evaluated based on ease of use, price, features, and a variety of testing performed by our editor and IGN’s sister-site PCMag.com for scan times, false positives, and correct identification of threats. Note that if you click on one of these links to buy the product, IGN may get a share of the sale. For more, read our Terms of Use.

If you've ever sought out a free anti-virus solution, you're probably familiar with Avast. Its free version has been around for years and has a solid reputation. The paid version of its anti-virus gives you more features including phishing protection and a sandbox for safely running untrusted apps, and it's a bit more expensive than most other antivirus solutions at $39.99 for one device (PC only).

Design and Features

Both the free and the paid version have the same basic interface, and it reminded me of Windows 8.1's interface. It's almost like they designed it back when purple and tiles were cool, and never updated it. Similar to BitDefender, there's a bar of icons on the left side of the app where you choose the different security tasks you'd like to complete. The big difference between the icons in the paid version and the ones in the free version are the locks over certain features. Obviously, you have to pay to unlock extra features, but it's annoying having unavailable features in the UI of the software you have paid for.

AvastProtectionScreen

One cool feature available in the paid version that's extremely unlikely to appeal to the average user is Avast's sandbox. You can run any program you want in a virtual machine without fear of it corrupting your OS install. It's almost like catching a monster in a cage, taunting it, and then pushing a button to vaporize it once you've had your fun. Though it might not be useful for everyone, it is good for testing unknown programs or files, especially if you have reason to suspect a program you just downloaded.

Avast also offers an anti-phishing feature named Real site that ensures your computer is only connecting to trusted DNS server. Since DNS is what keeps us from needing to type out the IP addresses of every website, it's enormously useful and basically makes the modern web possible. Connecting to a sketchy DNS server allows attackers to re-route your surfing to something less than reputable, as something like Google.com might resolve to a phishing website designed to look and behave exactly as Google does. Real Site prevents that from happening. It also scanned my router's connections and discovered my router's firmware was out of date, which I wasn't aware of.

AvastRouterVuln

Test Results

For real world test results we relied on sister site PCMag's thorough testing, which involves examining industry rankings as well as real-world testing. Its antivirus functionality scores 8.7 out of a possible 10, which is a passable, but not exceptional, result on this that scale. As far as malware protection, Avast did incredibly well, scoring a 9.7 out of 10, though competitor Webroot scored a perfect 10.

In anti-phishing tests, Avast again flexed its muscles, beating out the built-in anti-phishing measures in Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer and coming within 2-percent of Symantec Norton Antivirus, the current anti-phishing champion.

Purchasing Guide

Avast Pro is a pricier antivirus offering than most. Like most AV software it's available in three pricing tiers, but unlike almost everyone else, these more expensive tiers don't offer protection for a higher number of devices - they just up the number of years you're covered. So if you just have a single machine you want covered, Avast isn't a bad option. But if you have a household full of devices, it's worth taking a closer look at an AV package that offers coverage for 5+ devices:

The Verdict

Avast is a good anti-virus solution with a clean UI, active protection features that aren't annoying, and it doesn't bog down or otherwise interrupt normal web browsing and computer use. It's easy to use and effective, but since all the basic security features are included in the free version there is little need to spring for the pricey Pro version. The sandbox mode is pretty awesome, but other than that, there's not a lot of reason to upgrade.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Aucun commentaire:

Enregistrer un commentaire