Few differences in virus scanners for Windows 10 in the latest AV test

There are few differences in virus scanners for Windows 10, according to the latest test from the German company AV Testing Institute. Of the sixteen antivirus programs tested for end users, twelve were rated “best products,” including the built-in Microsoft Defender virus scanner and the free version of Avast.

For the latest test, conducted in July and August, antivirus packages were evaluated in terms of malware detection, performance, and ease of use. Packages can earn a total of 18 points for the three components. Malware Detection examined 306 instances of “zero-day” malware and over 16,000 instances of malware detected in the last four weeks before testing.

An average detection rate of 99.3 percent was achieved for new malware, which in AV-Test’s definition is considered new malware. Testing of more than 18,500 malware instances resulted in an average detection score of 100 percent. Avast, AVG, Bitdefender, F-Secure, Kaspersky, McAfee, Norton, PC Matic, and Trend Micro scored at 100 percent on both detection tests. To score six points in this section, it was not necessary to detect all the malware. Microworld and Protected.net achieved the lowest score in this component with 5 points.

The second part, Performance, looked at things like visiting websites, downloading files, installing and running programs, copying files, and how packages affect this. Ten packages achieve the maximum six points here, and the remaining packages total 5.5 points. According to AV-Test, this shows that virus scanners have little impact on systems these days.

During the final part of the test, ease of use and “false positives” were discussed. In these cases, the virus scanning software considers the clean software to be malware or the clean websites to be infected. Something that can have unpleasant consequences when it comes to system files, for example. The test used 1.1 million sites and clean files. PC Matic scores four points in this segment, while other packages achieve the maximum of six points.

Of the sixteen virus scanners, twelve were ultimately rated as “Top Product.” These packages managed to score 17.5 or a maximum of 18 points. This includes the free antivirus packages Avast Free Antivirus and Microsoft Defender Antivirus. The latter is a standard part of Windows 10. Malwarebytes, Microworld, PC Matic, and Protected.net are the four packages that aren’t rated as the best.