Avast antivirus review

It’s not uncommon for big companies to buy smaller ones to decrease competition, but it’s led to three big-name antivirus providers falling under the same company. In late 2016, Avast was big enough to buy its competitor AVG. Then in late 2021, Norton bought Avast. There are differences between all three antivirus providers, and Avast has enough personality to stand alone, so let’s take a look at how it fares in Australia these days.

All versions of Avast, including the free version, come with the following features:

• Virus, malware, and ransomware blocking
• App monitoring
• Advanced firewall

Avast Premium Security builds on those three core features with the following inclusions:

• Webcam protection
• Fake/dangerous website avoidance
• Sensitive information protection

Finally, Avast One, which is the version that Avast seems to want to push people towards, has the six features above, plus:

• Unlimited VPN (with 55 locations)
• Account breach monitoring
• Automatic driver updates
• Ad-tracker blocking
• Device clean-up and tuning

I really like that the free version of Avast is prominently displayed on the official website. Avast One Essential can be found in multiple prominent locations and offers installation steps when you download it.

The installer prompts you to make Avast Secure Browser your default browser (just like AVG), so untick this if you like what you’re already using. It took a few minutes to install the Windows version before I was ready to go, which is a longer process than all of the other antivirus services I tested. It seemed to get stuck at the 50% mark while it was adding additional non-antivirus features, but it was fully installed after a forced computer restart.

As is the trend with antivirus services, the Android app is even easier to install. The only real challenge is ensuring you download the Avast One – Security & Privacy app rather than a handful of other Avast-branded apps. After a basic tour, the app prompts a smart scan, which requires some basic Android permissions to properly run, before you’re presented with a results page after a scan. The scan was done in under a minute on my Google Pixel 5.

Like the Android app, Avast One on Windows prompts you to run a smart scan before doing anything else. It’s not only smart, it’s also quick, taking under 30 seconds to complete. Like other free services, Avast One Essential does push you towards an upgraded version, but you can easily ignore this.

After the smart scan, the Avast dashboard strangely prioritises non-essential messages at the top and you have to scroll to get to the more meaningful shortcuts. Here’s where you’ll find smart scan, deep scan, and other targeted features. With either of the Avast One versions, you’ll also find the VPN here. Note the free version of Avast VPN is restricted to a weekly 5GB of traffic, but it’s impressive that it has a server in Melbourne (even the best free VPNs don’t tend to have Australian servers).

The final option on the dashboard is to check for security breaches, which you can either do by signing in with an Avast account or manually entering an email address. After a few seconds, it showed several breaches related to one of my email addresses.

Branching out, the Explore tab has the main dashboard options and more, making it easy to customise Avast in terms of web, ransomware, firewall, and other forms of protection. It’s easy to see at-a-glance which features are available for the free version and which are locked behind the premium version.

Short of encountering a virus, malware, or ransomware, testing the comprehensiveness of antivirus software is a bit tricky. Instead of creating a virtual machine or compromising actual devices, we lean heavily on the independent industry-respected analysis of outlets like AV-Test and AV-Comparatives, both of which regularly perform real-world tests of up-to-date antivirus software.

Avast is one of the antivirus services both sites test and, according to recent results from AV-Comparatives testing, Avast had solid scores. AV-Comparative’s March 2022 tests showed that Avast blocked 99.4% of threats and only reported two false positives. That false-positives score is beaten only by Kaspersky’s single report, but while 99.4% is impressive threat blocking, it’s not as good as the 100% scores for Norton and Bitdefender.

Check out the table below for the key differences between Avast and its most popular antivirus peers.

Avast is functionally the same as AVG, and the latter antivirus service offers better overall pricing. Still, Avast has an easy-to-use free version that bundles great advanced features, and there are plenty of reasons to consider paying for one of the premium versions, though Avast One has the better value over Avast Premium Security. Ultimately, Bitdefender and Norton are better picks for us, but Avast is still a robust antivirus contender.

Our antivirus testing starts with basic feature comparisons, including pricing and whether there’s a free version or an easily accessible free trial. Letting people try before they buy scores well with us. Then we check to ensure antivirus software includes critical features like real-time protection and speedy scanning tools, ideally without a massive performance impact on compatible devices.

The ease of installation is then evaluated as well as how well an antivirus service guides the user and encourages them to explore additional security settings (where available). Antivirus software that also includes extended features—like a VPN, password manager, digital file shredder or other bolt-ons—scores points for versatility.

Ultimately, though, we always go back to how well an antivirus service performs on key metrics: namely, threat protection and performance impact. For these factors, we defer to the extensive ongoing testing data that’s readily available from antivirus authorities AV-Comparatives and AV-Test. If antivirus software scores well in those external tests, it has a great chance of scoring well with us, too.

Below are the answers to some of the most pressing Avast questions.