AV -TEST conducted a new series of tests to determine the best anti-virus for Windows 7.This time, a total of 25 security products that work with the world's number one operating system participated.
As expected, Microsoft's Security Essentials, which is available with a free license on Windows, was used as the reference and comparison product for the new round of testing. Microsoft's product received 0 out of 6 points for protection, 4 out of 6 for performance, and 6 points for usability.
Apart from one product that received the certification, AhnLab: V3 Internet Security 8.0, all the others had relatively poor performance during the test and of course the score did not go up, which indicates that the protection offered to users is minimal.
When it comes to protection now, security products from Trend Micro, G Data, McAfee, MicroWorld, F-Secure, Kaspersky, Qihoo, Bitdefender, and Avira received the highest scores.
No product managed to get the maximum possible score in the performance tests, but Symantec's Norton Internet Security 2014, Tencent PC Manager 8.5, McAfee Internet Security 2014, Kaspersky Internet Security 2014, Qihoo 360 Internet Security 4.2, and Bitdefender Internet Security 2014 all achieved the highest scores.
In terms of usability, almost every anti-virus product tested had impressive results, with the exception of Comodo Internet Security Premium 6.3 and Norman Security Suite Pro 10.1, which ranked among the lowest-scoring products.
The big winners of the new round of AV-TEST tests are Kaspersky Internet Security 2014 and Bitdefender Internet Security 2014, which received the highest scores for protection and usability and scored almost flawlessly in performance tests.
The best free antivirus software on the market is once again Avira Internet Security 2014, which also received a very good score for protection and usability, but only got a 3.5 out of 6 for performance. Both AVG and avast!Free Antivirus 2014 perform quite well, but in the case of the latter, security experts gave it only a 3 for the protection it provides to consumers using computers with Windows 7 64bit operating system.
“During January and February 2014, we continuously evaluated 25 security products, using their default settings. We always used the latest publicly available version for all the products we tested. We updated them and let them update themselves, using the cloud services they use,” said AV-TEST.
“We focused on realistic test scenarios and tested the products against real threats circulating on the Internet. The products had to prove their capabilities, using all components and layers of protection.”
