Avira Total Security Suite (2017) - Review 2022

When you retrieve of a security suite, you likely picture a utility that integrates antivirus and a firewall, along with such items as spam filtering and parental command. Avira Total Security Suite includes an antivirus component, but from in that location it diverges from the norm. Instead of a firewall y'all go a management tool for Windows Firewall. The other suite components are premium editions of Avira's VPN, software update tool, and system tuner. This gaggle of separate utilities just doesn't supercede a full, integrated suite, though, and information technology tanked our easily-on functioning tests.

The list cost for just one installation of Avira Total is $109.99 per twelvemonth; for $129.99 you go 3 licenses. That'southward unusually expensive. The entry-level suites from Bitdefender and Kaspersky cost $79.95 per year for three licenses. For Bitdefender Full Security 2022, Bitdefender's high-end mega-suite, you pay $89.95 per year for 5 licenses, while Kaspersky costs $10 more than that, also for five licenses. Your $89.99 subscription for Norton gets 10 licenses, along with 25GB of hosted storage for online backup. And McAfee's $89.99 subscription puts no limit on the number of devices yous tin can protect.

Perhaps recognizing this pricing discrepancy, Avira has just introduced a monthly service called Avira Prime. For $nine.99 per month (which comes to $119.88 per year) you tin can install all of Avira'southward premium tools on up to 5 Windows, macOS, Android, or iOS devices. Raising the ante to $12.99 per month ($155.88 per year) removes the five-device limit; you tin can install Avira on all of your devices. That'southward still nigh 75 percent more the toll of Norton or McAfee LiveSafe, merely it'due south an comeback.

Lengthy Installation

The all-time style to get Avira Full Security installed starts with creating or logging into your Avira account online. If you haven't already done so, you can redeem your registration code hither. Download the installer and launch it, then click the push to accept the license agreement and beginning the install.

The chief installation procedure takes quite a while. On completion, you lot can see the available features in Avira Connect, the same launcher and management tool used by other Avira programs. You'll find Antivirus Pro, Phantom VPN Pro, Arrangement Speedup Pro, and Firewall Managing director already installed. To complete the installation, y'all must separately install Software Updater Pro and the Watch browser.

In addition, you need to launch Chrome and Firefox to install Avira's browser extensions. Both get SafeSearch Plus, for secure searching. In Chrome, yous add Safe Shopping; in Firefox, Browser Safety. These two are actually the same thing—Avira is but experimenting with naming. Note that Avira Password Manager is not part of this suite. When information technology does hit the shelves, it will exist function of Avira Prime, merely not part of Avira Full Security.

Shared Antivirus Features

The heart of this suite is Avira Antivirus Pro, which I've already reviewed. Please refresh your memory by reading that review, or just cheque out the summary below.

Lab Test Results Nautical chart Malware Blocking Results Chart Antiphishing Results Chart

The independent testing labs generally give Avira high marks. It received the highest possible rating in all four of the AV-Comparatives tests that I follow. It also passed two difficult tests conducted past MRG-Effitas. Its xvi.5 point score with AV-Exam Establish is decent, but Bitdefender, Kaspersky, and Trend Micro took the maximum possible score, 18 points.

Avira'southward full, on-demand browse took longer than any other recent product in my testing, and its real-time protection component likewise took its time about eliminating threats in my malware blocking examination. While it detected 97 pct of my samples—the same as Norton, Tendency Micro, and a few others—it allow an unusually big number of malware executables slip through, yielding a score of 8.9. Webroot SecureAnywhere Cyberspace Security Complete, PC Matic, and Comodo earned a perfect ten points against the aforementioned samples.

In my malicious URL blocking exam, Avira fared better, blocking 95 percentage of the malware downloads, most by completely blocking access to the dangerous site. Withal, its antiphishing score wasn't impressive, at 27 per centum points behind the detection rate of consistent antiphishing powerhouse Symantec Norton Security Premium.

The pro-only Mail Protection component checks incoming POP3 and IMAP email for malware. You can optionally have it scan outgoing SMTP mail service, simply it's difficult to film how that would be necessary.

Using the Device Protection feature, you lot can head off malware spread by USB by blocking apply of USB devices in general but allowing access for specific, approved USB drives. However, you can't prevent unauthorized users (your kids, perhaps) from overriding settings to let mounting an unknown drive. The similar characteristic in G Data Total Security 2022 and TrustPort Total Protection offers more thorough control.

Shared Gratuitous Components

When you install Avira Costless Security Suite, it automatically installs a collection of free security add together-ons. With Avira Total Security, it's upward to y'all whether to install those components. In addition, Full Security upgrades several of them to the full-featured Pro version. I'll embrace those separately.

The Watch browser is a hardened, Chrome-based browser with a number of nifty tricks congenital in. Privacy Badger actively blocks ads and other trackers that endeavor to profile your web surfing. As its name implies, HTTPS Everywhere forces a secure HTTPS connection wherever bachelor. And Avira's Browser Safety flags dangerous sites and looks for improve deals when you're shopping.

Avira'southward browser extension (currently called Browser Prophylactic in Firefox, Safe Shopping in Chrome, as mentioned earlier) brings safety browsing and deal-finding to other browsers, but not to Internet Explorer. SafeSearch Plus filters search results so you don't meet any iffy links.

See How We Test Security Software

Firewall Manager

The Firewall Managing director says a lot on starting time launch. Optimize settings with 1 click! Cake programs from connecting to the internet! Hands create firewall rules! The one thing information technology doesn't say is that the firewall it's refering to is not anything from Avira; it's but the built-in Windows Firewall. Everything you tin can do with this component, you tin can likewise do past configuring Windows Firewall straight. Granted, Avira does then in a much friendlier style than Microsoft. F-Secure Rubber and Trend Micro also rely on Windows Firewall, merely Avira does a more thorough chore.

The main folio for this component shows the firewall'south land. If information technology'south at the green (recommended) level, there's nothing you lot need to do. Curious users tin click the settings icon to view or even change bones settings similar whether the firewall is active, whether it pops upward a notification when it blocks a programme, and what sort of connections information technology blocks. If yous turn off the firewall for any of the iii network types, you immediately come across a popup warning from Windows.

The other three pages, selected by clicking icons in the left rails, represent Programs, Rules, and Notifications. You can click a program to come across (but non alter) its permissions. The details for items in the Rules list are rather more than complex, but yet easier to grasp than by going directly into Windows Firewall settings. You can disable any rule, or add rules, but only firewall experts should do so, and experts don't need Avira'southward hand-holding in the offset place.

The main matter you don't get with Windows Firewall and, by extension, with Firewall Manager, is the fine-grained plan command offered past such products as Norton and Kaspersky Total Security. These high-end tools automatically configure network permissions for known good programs, and automatically nuke known bad programs. For unknowns, in betwixt those extremes, they actively monitor program activity, including network activity, and apply limits every bit necessary.

Phantom VPN Pro

When y'all connect to the internet over a network you don't control, at that place's ever the possibility that a malefactor could heed in on your connection. Using a virtual individual network (VPN) foils this sort of attack past encrypting your connexion. The local VPN encrypts your traffic and sends information technology securely to a VPN server. The VPN server communicates with the internet and sends back its encrypted results.

Available separately for $x per calendar month, Avira Phantom VPN Pro runs on all your Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS devices. We'll accept a full review, including speed testing, shortly. Similar PureVPN, Phantom VPN has no bandwidth limit. But where PureVPN allows five devices, Phantom VPN doesn't impose a device limit.

Using Phantom VPN is ridiculously simple. Just tap Connect next to its name in Avira Connect, or launch the app itself and click a push button. Phantom VPN connects to the nearest available server, and your traffic is encrypted. Y'all can disconnect simply as easily.

If your aim is non so much to protect your connection as to hide your location—to view region-locked web content, for case—yous can choose from servers in any of xx different countries. The countries are all in Europe and Northward and South America, except for Singapore and Hong Kong. Private Internet Access covers 25 countries, including Asia. KeepSolid VPN Unlimited goes beyond that. Unlike well-nigh, it even has servers in Africa, and Russia.

Phantom VPN has a number of useful, advanced features. It tin can automatically boot in when you connect to an insecure network. To avoid the possibility that someone could track yous through your device'south DNS lookup requests, information technology runs those requests through its own Domain Name Organization server. Its Kill Switch characteristic can cutting the cyberspace connexion if something happens to the VPN connection. Private Internet Access VPN also offers DNS protection and a Kill Switch.

At present, our Editors' Choice VPN products are KeepSolid, NordVPN, Private Internet Access, and PureVPN. Once we've had a adventure to put Phantom VPN to the test, nosotros'll have a better idea of how it matches up.

Software Updater Pro

You can purchase Avira Software Updater Pro separately for $31.99 per year, but it comes as part of Avira Full Security. Please read my full review of the standalone product for precise details on my experience.

When yous launch Software Updater, it checks to make sure that Windows is fully up to date, and also checks various important apps from Microsoft and other vendors. If it finds any missing security patches, it lists them for you. All y'all need to practice is click Update All, and cheque in on the process from fourth dimension to time.

In testing, I found that Software Updater needed to reboot the system quite a few times. I could postpone the reboot, reboot immediately, or abolish it until manual reboot. I was disappointed to detect that the update process didn't continue automatically later reboot. Getting everything updated took two and a half hours.

Once you've got everything upward to engagement, you can set Software Updater to automatically go on all programs updated, or to automatically check for updates on some programs but not others. You can also just run it yourself when you know you lot've got a little time to spare.

In that location's a free edition of Software Updater, available separately or equally part of the gratuitous suite. However, all information technology does is tell you what needs updating. With the gratuitous suite, installing the patches is something you must practise for yourself.

System Speedup Pro

Y'all can buy tune-upwardly utility System Speedup Pro separately for $31.99 per year. When you launch this component, it displays a quick summary of your PC's condition in the categories of Disk, Performance, and Privacy, offer a percentage for each and color-coding them every bit Alarming, Bad, or Adept. Click Browse to start making improvements.

By default, the scan seeks junk files, Registry errors, and private data that could reveal the way y'all use the cyberspace, or your computer. You can review these findings, but most users will only click the big green button to ready found problems. This scan took my system from Alarming, Bad, and Bad to 100 percent Skillful across the board.

Tech-savvy users can expand the scan to check for fragmented files, and to use Expert Fashion. Choosing Expert Mode gets a large warning stating that in this way yous must review the items marked for removal, or risk losing things like your chat logs and Windows update history. When I selected this way, Avira displayed hundreds of Registry errors and thousands of junk files non previously listed. You tin dig in for a listing of categories, or dig farther to a list of individual files. Simply unless you're a truthful expert, you shouldn't employ this manner. At least Avira creates a restore signal before each cleanup, so if you exercise pause something, you tin recover.

Working in a virtual machine, I had no qualms almost trying adept mode. When I enabled removal of all items, not just the ones information technology selected by default, I got yet some other alarm. After optimization, my system showed 110 of 100 points in each of the three areas. For most users, 100 is good enough.

There'due south a lot more to System Speedup Pro than device optimization. A boot time optimizer tool measures the effect of startup programs on the kick process and suggests changes to speed the boot process. On my exam system, it recommended setting three startup programs for delayed launch later boot. This advice is really more useful than the painfully detailed startup timeline that you become from the startup analyzer in BullGuard Internet Security.

On the Ability Modes page, yous can choose Energy Saver manner, which disables services to preserve battery life, or Power Boost fashion, which boosts the apps you're using by grabbing resource from other services. You can as well easily select i of the power modes built into Windows.

The Tools page is so packed with features that it'due south well-nigh difficult to comprehend. Like BullGuard and Trend Micro Maximum Security, Avira tin can discover duplicate files and free up space by eliminating dupes. It tin encrypt and decrypt files, and shred the originals. Y'all can use it to analyze and identify the files and folders that utilize the almost infinite on disk, or to completely wipe all information from a disk. It includes good-level tools for managing drivers, services, and network connections.

The fill-in tool isn't quite what yous'd call back. Information technology can back up your system Registry, or the Principal Kick Record for your drives. And it can invoke the built-in Windows ability to create a full System Image of your drives (if you can find the infinite to shop that massive image file). The tool collection includes a utility for forensic recovery of deleted file data, an uninstaller tool, and more.

This very impressive tune-upwardly and arrangement management utility goes beyond BullGuard's, and beyond but almost whatsoever other suite I've seen. Information technology's of import to remember, though, that a bang-up deal of what information technology does is unrelated to security.

A Big Drag on Performance

Few electric current security suites have a noticeable effect on functioning, but my testing suggests that Avira Full Security is the unfortunate exception to that dominion. Based on my feel, yous're really going to need all the aid you can get from System Speedup Pro.

I didn't notice bug in my file manipulation tests. A lengthy script that moves and copies lots of files between drives took 16 percent longer with Avira running, simply a hair over the electric current average. Some other script was completely unaffected past Avira, fourth dimension-wise.

The problem cropped up in my boot fourth dimension examination. This test uses a script that launches at boot and waits for 10 seconds in a row with less than five percent CPU usage; at that point, the system is ready to use. Subtracting the start of the boot procedure, as reported by Windows, yields a boot time figure. I average multiple runs of this test, then install the product under test and average another ready of runs.

Performance Results Chart

With Avira active, this test took 255 pct longer to complete, more than any product I've tested. To put information technology in more than concrete terms, boot time with no suite is a bit less than 90 seconds. Avira stretched that time to more than five minutes, something you would definitely discover.

I decided to uninstall Avira and rerun the no-suite baseline, but to check. The uninstallation process may have revealed function of the trouble. I had to uninstall seven singled-out applications, in the proper club, with a survey at the end of each asking why I was leaving. Measuring free disk space with and without the suite, I found that this gaggle of split up components occupied over 2GB on deejay, where most suites, even large ones, come in at less than 1GB.

With all the bits and pieces uninstalled, I ran a new baseline boot-time test. The results weren't appreciably different.

Averaging Avira's three scores yields a combined slowdown of 91 percent, the largest performance hit of any current product. The next-closest score is 67 percentage, a nevertheless-dismal achievement by Comodo Internet Security Complete 10. And after that, no contempo suite averaged more than 27 percent. At the other end of the spectrum, adaware antivirus total 12 and Webroot didn't take any measurable consequence in my tests.

A Crowd, Non a Suite

Despite its name, Avira Full Security Suite is less of a suite than a loose association of utilities. It takes more space, and more resources, than a fully integrated suite. With unlimited devices and bandwidth, its Phantom VPN component is impressive, and Software Updater Pro keeps your organization patched automatically. While not totally security-related, Organisation Speedup Pro is an absolute cornucopia of tools. And notwithstanding, the overall protection you get with this product doesn't remotely lucifer our summit-tier preferred suites.

While similar in proper name to Avira, Bitdefender Total Security and Kaspersky Total Security offer much, much more actual security, and toll significantly less. These ii are our Editors' Choice products for security mega-suite; either would be a smart choice. Even basic, entry-level suites from other vendors do more for your security than Avira. At that level, Bitdefender Cyberspace Security and Kaspersky Total Security hold the Editors' Pick imprint. Still at a price-betoken well below Avira's, Symantec Net Security Deluxe and McAfee LiveSafe have earned the Editors' Option award equally cross-platform multi-device suites. You have plenty of choices.

Sub-Ratings:
Note: These sub-ratings contribute to a product'southward overall star rating, every bit do other factors, including ease of use in real-world testing, bonus features, and overall integration of features.
Firewall: n/a
Antivirus:
Functioning:
Privacy:
Parental Control: n/a

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/security-suites/15251/avira-total-security-suite-2017

Posted by: sharpmeir1944.blogspot.com

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