Best Antivirus for Windows 10

Viruses are harmful programs which affect the working of the operating system. Windows 10 is one of the most popular operating systems. Being popular makes the operating system more vulnerable to viruses and other malicious programs. Although Microsoft, the software giant has put in efforts to solve this problem by adding a free antivirus called Windows Defender. But, it still isn’t the perfect solution.

After the addition of “Real-time scanning” the Windows Defender has become very slow. Many users have reported that the Disk transfer rate is 100% while the real-time scanning on Windows Defender is on. Using a Windows PC without a proper antivirus is a potential risk and relying on Windows Defender doesn’t stop the bad things from happening. That’s why we have created this article to help you find the Best Antivirus for Windows 10.

There are a lot of antivirus software for Windows. That makes selecting best antivirus for Windows 10 machine tougher. Before buying an antivirus. Most of them aren’t aware, but people who regularly study about antiviruses go to individual labs like SE Labs and AV Test. So we went to the recent test done by AV Test to find out the best antivirus for Windows 10. After a complete analysis, here’s a list of the best antivirus for Windows 10.

1. Avira Antivirus Pro

Avira Antivirus Pro is the best antivirus for Windows 10 PC. It comes with a professional interface which is quite easy to manage. Some of the key features of Avira Antivirus Pro are:

• Anti-Ransomware

It can stop a ransomware attack even before it happens by heuristic technology. It could save you huge money, a lot of people who hijack your PC using a ransomware demand from $100-NO Limit to decrypt your PC. Having an antivirus like Avira Antivirus pro would be helpful at times like this.

• Device control

We all use a lot of removable devices on a daily basis. Although most of the antivirus programs allow you to scan a removable device, some don’t scan them.

• Identity Protection

Just like other antivirus software. Avira Antivirus Pro also blocks keyloggers and malicious codes which could cause harm to your PC. So an attacker who is trying to retrieve your information will fail.

• Safe Banking

One wouldn’t want anyone to steal the banking credentials. A lot of times what happens is, you might be opening the correct site, but the attacker plans an attack on the website. So once you enter the login details on the attacked website, the details shall be sent to the attacker. Avira Antivirus pro keeps scanning for issues with the sites and warns you if you are entering your information in a wrong place.

• Data Privacy & Fast working

Avira antivirus pro protects your data on the PC by not allowing unauthorized people. Most of the antivirus software end up slowing the other tasks while the scanning is going on. However, this only reduces the speed by 8%.

2. BitDefender Plus

BitDefender Plus is another good antivirus for Windows 10. It has the score similar to that of Avira Antivirus Pro. The focus of this antivirus software is to provide, Best Protection with Best performance. The features are similar to that of the Avira Antivirus Plus, but it is little costlier and slower compared to Avira Antivirus pro. That’s it makes it to the second position. Here’s the list of features it comes with

• Ransomware Protection.
• Advanced Threat Defense
• Anti-Fraud
• Secure Browsing
• Complete data protection
• Rescue Mode.
• Built-in Password Manager
• File shredder
• Safe online banking.

3. ESET Smart Security Premium

The ESET Smart security premium is an excellent antivirus software for Windows 10 systems. However, one thing we’ve noticed is, it makes your system little slow. The applications take few extra seconds to open up, and once they are open, things work at a reasonable pace. There are multiple options you could go for if you want to buy an ESET antivirus, for instance, You can go for Multi-device if you want security on multiple devices. The features are not very different than the antivirus, as mentioned earlier. However, it is important to know them.

• Ransomware Protection Enabled.
• Spyware Protection.
• Parental controls.
• Safe banking.
• Password Manager
• Multiple devices (If you go for the multi-device plan)

Script-Based Attack protection (To avoid attacks from injected Javascript)

4. F-Secure Antivirus

F-Secure is another good antivirus software for the Windows 10 operating system. Besides the virus & malware protection. F-Secure comes with various “Free tools” that could make surfing the internet, even more, easier and safer. The F-Secure antivirus is better than ESET concerning performance, but ESET beats this regarding protection. Here are some features that F-Secure comes with

• Virus Protection
• Browsing and Banking Protection.
• Find Your Phone (Useful if you lost your device)
• Family protection.

However, if you are okay with little fall in performance, but want more security, then you shall go for F-Secure Total which includes a free personal VPN, tracking protection, and WiFi protection.

5. Avast Free Antivirus

Avast is one of the most popular antivirus software. Most of the people use this antivirus as it comes from known names. The free version of the Avast Antivirus beats some of the paid antivirus software. That’s the reason why this has made it to the list. Let us look the features of Avast Free Antivirus

• Effortless security

Gaming mode (To avoid disturbances while gaming)
Behaviour shield (To keep an eye on applications to prevent malware)
CyberCapture (If a particular file is a threat, it is sent to the cloud, and if it is risky, all the other Avast users will be protected from that particular threat.

Is Windows Defender Good Enough

The team at Microsoft makes the Windows Defender. So, it does understand 99% of the threats available in the market. But being a large company, Microsoft couldn’t keep finding the new type of viruses that come into the market. On the other hand, the above-mentioned antivirus companies keep looking for new viruses on a daily basis, so even if there is a new harmful threat, the other antiviruses could find them out.

However, Windows is working on it and now we can see the Windows Defender getting an update at least once in a week. The question we are trying to answer here is “Is Windows Defender Good Enough?”. Yes, the Windows Defender is good enough. However, if you plan to rely on the Windows Defender alone then make sure you also install an anti-malware to avoid malware on your PC.

One thing a lot of people hate about the Windows Defender antivirus is, it keeps on scanning the disk. So most of the times the disk in the performance monitor would show 100% usage. It also slows down the performance and could not be good for your HDD. However, there are guides on the Internet which help you to turn off real-time scanning on Windows Defender.

Ransomware Protection with Windows Defender?

Coming to ransomware protection, If you are worried about it then we don’t suggest you stick with the Windows Defender because no matter how good it is, it won’t protect your PC from Ransomware. Because most of the antivirus use some algorithm to stop the ransomware attack. Most of the good antiviruses are intelligent enough to detect a ransomware even before it gets to your PC.

One good thing Windows Defender does is, it removes a threat file as it comes across it. Which means unless an attacker has done a lot of work to fool Windows Defender before sending the ransomware on your system, you are safe. However, in some cases the attacker has installed in the ransomware via some installer, so while the ransomware was being installed, it was the user who was doing it. So in such cases Defender won’t prompt you or save you!

Does Windows Defender come with Secure Browsing?

Also, there is no Secure browsing with Windows Defender. If you are someone who has a lot of online transactions to do or who stays connected to the internet from PC most of the times, we don’t suggest you to use Windows Defender as a primary antivirus. You shall install the free Avast Antivirus which has some features of the paid antiviruses. Using a different Antivirus software? Is it better than the ones we mentioned above? Please comment and let us know about it and the features, if we think it’s worth adding, then we shall add it.