Antivirus software for Windows 10 tested

Frank Ziemann

The Magdeburg AV-Test Institute tested 18 antivirus programs that their manufacturers had submitted for certification. The detailed tests took place in January and February 2022 on Windows 10 Pro (64-bit). Compared to the previous test two months ago, Bullguard and Eset are missing. Otherwise, the test field has remained the same except for a few version changes. The test report of the protection solutions for companies can be found here.

The best AV programs in a nutshell:

Of the 18 products tested, these 11 candidates scored the full 18 points:

The test results

All candidates easily met the minimum requirements for an AV-Test certificate. This time, 11 products achieved the full 18 points. This includes Microsoft Defender Antivirus (formerly Windows Defender), which comes standard with Windows 10. Three other products follow closely behind, which only lost half a point. These 14 protection solutions received the AV-Test “Top Product” award. From the top to midfield it is still tight. Only at the very end of the result table do the performances drop.

In this test, 15 out of 18 antivirus solutions scored the full six points for protection. K7 Security gets 5.5 points. The vast majority of the products in this test therefore offer good to very good malware detection. Microworld eScan and Protected.net Total AV can’t quite keep up.

How much do the protection programs slow you down?

AV-Test tested the braking effect of the protection programs on a rather slow and a fast PC. Differences between the two computers can usually be measured, but are hardly noticeable in everyday use. As expected, the braking effect is usually a bit clearer on the slower computer in the current test. In earlier tests, there were also individual cases in which it was the other way around. For the first time, no product slows down computers by more than 30 percent. When accessing popular websites, AVG Internet Security and Trend Micro Internet Security slow down a little more than the rest. When copying, tested with over 10,000 files, they all remain quite inconspicuous, as does when starting common programs and downloading..

Which programs often give false alarms?

For a long time, PC Matic (formerly PC Pitstop) has been attracting attention due to frequent false alarms, but it is getting better from test to test. This time there are a total of six misdiagnoses, most of them when installing legitimate software. Microworld eScan also triggered false alarms six times – only with the complete scan. Malwarebytes followed with five, Bitdefender with four, and F-Secure and K7 Security with three false positives each. With G Data, Kaspersky, McAfee, Trend Micro and Vipre, only five manufacturers manage to complete all the tests this time without triggering a false alarm.

While this time again not a single program produced false alarms when surfing the web, three quarters of the candidates gave a false alarm at least once in the case of complete system scans (complete check of a clean system). The error rate of most products is at or below the tolerable limit – measured by the fact that the system scan had to check over 1.2 million virus-free program files.

Conclusion

There is no clear winner in this test either, the tip is too wide for that. The Microsoft solution included as standard in Windows has established itself at the top. However, there are losers: Protected.net Total AV and Microworld eScan are not quite convincing when it comes to malware detection, PC Matic and Microworld eScan trigger false alarms too often.

The results table is sorted by the last column. In it, we placed more weight on the protective effect (60 percent), while AV-Test gives all three categories equal weight (penultimate column). This has no effect on the order in this test. This time, however, is only a snapshot.

The detailed results of this and previous tests can be found on the AV-Test Institute website.