The smallest and the fastest.
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.
Webroot is a fairly well-known name in the security community, and it's all encompassing "Secure Anywhere" software suite is offered in three varietals: antivirus, Internet Security Plus, and Internet Security Complete. I decided to take a look at its basic "antivirus" package, which touts lighting fast scans, no updates to install since it's cloud-based, and phishing/malware protection. It's a pretty basic package that costs $39.99 (discounted to $19,99 for the first year) and can be installed on one device or three devices for an extra $10.
Design and Features
Webroot has a simple interface that's easy to figure out and intelligently organized. A column on the right side contains all the options for security and scanning, and most options are simple, binary choices. Do you want real-time protection on or off? Just hit the switch. There are also more advanced menus available to really drill down and set things up to your particular personal requirements.
On top of antivirus and malware protection, Webroot has a few extra features to keep you safe online too. First, there's a browser extension for Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Firefox that warns you when you're on a sketchy site that might harm your computer or your private information. It's labeled as phishing and ransomware protection, and the extension puts an icon in your browser that appears as a green check for good sites, and a yellow exclamation for suspicious ones. Password and mobile protection are available if you upgrade to a more expensive package.
There's also a handy System Control feature that lets you directly control active processes on your computer. It's a troubleshooter's dream. Recently I was having trouble with Adobe Lightroom and the potential fixes involved stopping certain processes to see if it fixed the problem. Getting into Windows process manager isn't the hardest thing in the world, especially for experienced users, but Webroot makes it even simpler, allowing you to Allow, Monitor, or Block processes that you suspect could be causing issues.
Test Results
Antivirus software doesn't usually take up much space on your hard drive. For example, Norton has one of the biggest installations and takes up just over a gigabyte, which is nothing these days. But Webroot takes it to the next level when it comes to a low-impact install size, requiring a mere one megabyte when installed. Seriously. I had to check to make sure the installation wasn't just the installer, because I have animated gifs on my computer that take up more space than that. It's able to maintain such a small footprint thanks to its reliance on the cloud for updates and scanning. That means if you don't have a connection to the internet, Webroot can't keep you fully protected from new threats. But if you aren't connected to the internet, the chances of you coming across a new threat are pretty slim. This isn't 1993, no one's spreading viruses through floppy discs anymore.
Webroot has a huge database of known programs against which it checks when it scans your PC. When it scans your local computer, it's asking the database "does this check out?" If the database flags something malicious, your local Webroot client prevents it from running. If something wholly unknown to Webroot finds its way onto your hard drive, Webroot sends information back to headquarters for analysis while tracking the app and limiting what it can do until it knows what it is. Once its rule-making and human investigation is complete and it can verify whether the app is legit or not, it sends an update to your local client that either allows the app to go ahead or rolls back all its actions.
The less-is-more philosophy for install size carries over to the scanning, as well. The average time for an initial scan across all the tests I ran of antivirus products (which includes five other applications) was 44 minutes, with some, like McAfee, taking well over an hour for an initial scan. Webroot, on the other hand, absolutely screamed through initial scans on my clean test computer, taking just three to four minutes on a clean installation of Windows 10. On my daily driver PC, the initial scan took 7 and a half minutes with 2TB of photo storage, a 500GB gaming drive, and my 256GB SSD OS drive. It doesn't even seem possible, really.
For real world test results we relied on sister site PCMag's thorough testing, which involves examining several industry rankings as well as real-world tests. In their tests the cloud-based nature of Webroot meant some of the traditional tests weren't able to run, but when it came to finding and dealing with threats, Webroot performed extremely well. It scored a perfect 10 in malware blocking testing, stopping 100 percent of threats. Webroot's anti-phishing protections beat out gold-standard Norton by one point, but it was only able to block 84 percent of malware URLs, which is great but obviously there's a little room for improvement. There's also some excellent anti-ransomware measures built in. So good, in fact, that it was hard to even load ransomware before Webroot wiped it out and restored all the previously encrypted files.
Purchasing Guide
Like most antivirus software, Webroot is available in three pricing tiers, most differenciated by the number of devices it can be installed on. Its highest tier also tosses in 25GB of free cloud storage:
The Verdict
Webroot's cloud-based approach to antivirus and malware makes this program lightweight and extremely effective. It's also lightning fast at scans and detects and deals with threats almost instantly, making it an overall excellent choice. But keep in mind this does mean an internet connection is required.
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