Avast Antivirus Review

Avast is the same company behind products like AVG Internet Security and AVG Secure VPN. Like AVG, Avast antivirus suites are designed to protect your PC from malware, ransomware, adware, and other threats to your hard drive. It offers a lot of great features, like identity protection and VPN, but it misses other features you may be looking for, like parental controls and password management.

Avast security's additional features extend your security to your online experience beyond basic protection from viruses. Website protection makes sure you're not landing on any potentially dangerous websites. Avast also offers VPN protection to keep your private information safe and it monitors your accounts to alert you if your identity has been stolen. 

Of course, the extras will cost you. The free version, Avast One Essential, just covers advanced firewall protection and viruses, ransomware, and malware blocking. Avast free antivirus also comes with a free browser for safer internet use.

The other two plans are the same price, but the Avast One plan offers features and the Premium plan offers more devices covered. So, if you need the advanced features and more devices covered, you're out of luck, which is weird. 

Avast One

• 5 devices protected
• Advanced firewall protection
• Viruses, ransomware, and malware blocking
• Webcam protection
• Website protection through the Avast secure browser
• Document protection
• VPN
• Information breach monitoring
• Automatic computer driver updates
• Cookie tracking blockers
• Clean up and tuning tools for devices

Avast Premium Security

• 10 devices protected
• Advanced firewall protection
• Viruses, ransomware, and malware blocking
• Webcam protection
• Website protection
• Document protection

At this price point, we'd hope to see a data shredder and parental controls included with the package to match competitors like Bitdefender’s Total Security.

When it comes to customer service, Avast seems to help and hurt its customers.

Once you settle on a plan, Avast has some nice customer-friendly policies, like a free thirty-day trial of the software so you can try it before you buy. If you do purchase the software and you're not happy with it, Avast offers a thirty-day money-back guarantee.

Automatic renewal isn't always good, but antivirus software is like health insurance: you don't want to be caught without it. Avast's yearly auto-renewal ensures there's no lapse in protection for your PC, but you can also opt-out at any time.

On the other hand, Avast has been caught selling its user's information to advertisers. This is ironic since it offers protection against advertising tracking in its Avast One plan. Avast has taken steps to allow users to opt-out of data collection, but we're hesitant about a company that says it's protecting your data while it once sold it.

While many other antivirus software firewalls work by either allowing nothing in or nothing out, the Avast firewall uses a more sophisticated system of rules that allow it to decide what passes through. This is a smarter approach that still provides top-notch protection.

Avast's Sandbox feature allows you to test out new software in a separate, protected space on your computer before it interacts with the rest of your hard drive, so you can make sure it's safe.

Avast has one of the lightest touches on the market when it comes to quietly doing its job without interfering with your computer experience, but its scans may run longer than expected.

If Avast catches any suspicious threats that it doesn't recognize, it sends them to its virus lab in the cloud for analysis. If the lab identifies one of these threats as malware, it notifies all Avast users. Not only does this keep your antivirus software current, it also adds more layers of protection.

Avast One Essential blocked 100% of malware and 100% of malware encountered online—according to tests from October 2022, run by the independent testing organization AV Test. It is one of the top performing antivirus software suites tested by the organization.

When we tried out the antivirus protection software, the smart scan was speedy and didn't seem to bog down our computer. While that's great, the software alerted us to some "Advanced Issues."  The issues were, basically, that we were using the free version and didn't have VPN or website browser protection. Then the software prompted us to upgrade to the paid plans to fix the issues. That, along with the pop-ups to buy other Avast software, seemed a little swarmy to us.

Avast software is a proven choice for those who want to go beyond basic antivirus programs and add the protection of a robust firewall and online security features. Its simple download, user-friendly interface, and light impact make it low-key enough for anyone to use, but its Sandbox features open up additional possibilities for the more adventurous.

Unfortunately, we are hesitant to recommend Avast antivirus and malware protection due to its poor customer data protection history. For other options, take a look at our top picks for the best antivirus software.

To write our Avast antivirus review, we studied Avast's independent test scores, read numerous online reviews from a variety of sources, and tried Avast avast online security software for ourselves. To learn more about how we review products, check out our methodology.

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• Keeping Your Computer Safe While Working from Home
• What to Do If Your Identity is Stolen

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