Windows defender reviews

Pricing Windows Defender and all its components are included in the Windows operating system. Read More.

Visit Windows Defender. Was this article helpful? Please tell us what we can improve This field is required. About the Author Sophie Anderson Cybersecurity researcher and tech journalist. About the Author Sophie Anderson has spent the last 10 years working as a software engineer for some of the biggest tech companies in Silicon Valley.

Share this Review 0. Check the top 3 alternative antivirus programs 9. Windows Defender User Reviews 26 Show first. English 9. Spanish 7. Italian 5. Polish 5. Dutch 4. Portuguese 4. Russian 2. Arabic 1. German 1. Hebrew 1. Swedish 1. You can trust the Community! Companies can't ask us to delete or change user reviews.

Was it helpful? Great Antivirus. Windows Defender is great. I actually had an experience getting malware on the system. McAfee, Norton, and Windows Defender detected it. Windows Defender was successfully able to move the malware to quarantine, and I was impressed. Reply Share. Best free antivirus. Chris Cummings. Does a decent job.

It is FREE. Easy to use and configure. It is There already. James Martin. Best AV out there. There are a lot of people out there that will tell you how great Norton is, or Kaspersky, and how - because you are paying for security software there is some liability on behalf of the security company when it fails. This is not true. Symantec will tell you "So sad for your loss.

Give us more money. Maybe it will work next time". In my testing, Panda detected malware about as accurately as Windows Defender, catching the majority of the malware files on my test PC, but it missed some newer adware and ransomware files that competitors like Norton caught.

Panda offers 5 different packages , including a free plan for users on a budget. Panda Dome has a good antivirus scanner with an intuitive interface, decent additional features, and flexible payment options. Panda offers 5 different packages, monthly, annual, 2-year, and 3-year subscription options, and a day money-back guarantee. Download Panda Now. Malwarebytes offers advanced protection against a wide range of malware threats, including zero-day attacks and ransomware.

Malwarebytes provides excellent malware protection and anti-phishing controls, but not much else. Malwarebytes comes with a day money-back guarantee. Download Malwarebytes Now. Trend Micro offers good malware detection rates and excellent anti-phishing protection, but its additional features are hit or miss.

Download Trend Micro Now. If Windows Defender detects malware, it will remove it from your PC. Relying on Windows Defender as your sole antivirus puts your entire PC at risk of infection.

While there are better free antiviruses out there, no free antivirus can offer the kind of guaranteed malware protection that the best anti-malware software can.

Mostly, yes. But again, there are better free Windows antiviruses out there, and again, no free antivirus is going to provide the kind of protection that you will get with a full-featured premium antivirus. In terms of malware detection, it often ranks below the detection rates offered by top antivirus competitors.

And finally, in terms of essential security features, Defender is severely lacking. Using Windows Defender as a standalone antivirus, while much better than not using any antivirus at all, still leaves you vulnerable to ransomware, spyware, and advanced forms of malware that can leave you devastated in the event of an attack. Professional Reviews. Affiliate Commissions. Reviews Guidelines. Ben Martens Updated on: January 1, This article contains.

Avira — More and Better Free Features 5. BullGuard — Better Performance for Gamers 7. Panda — More Extras and Flexible Pricing 9. Trend Micro — Good Phishing Protection. Short on time? Avira — Best free alternative with a more effective anti-malware scanner. On the other hand, it still lacks things that third-party antivirus makers add as enticements, such as a file shredder and VPN access. Microsoft plans to expand Defender's coverage to other platforms.

There's already a beta version of Microsoft Defender for Macs in enterprise deployments, and Microsoft says it is working on Microsoft Defender for Android and Linux. Hence the official renaming of the enterprise product to "Microsoft Defender. Even if you do nothing to a new Windows 8. Many users will not even notice that Defender is working until they're subjected to an attack. Defender compares new files and programs against a database of known malware and watches for signs that an attack is underway, such as the encryption of key files.

By default, Microsoft uploads suspect items from your computer for online analysis, but you can opt out of this data collection in the Windows Security Center settings. Several malware-signature updates go out daily to Windows Defender and Microsoft Defender's million users. Microsoft also has a bunch of specific defenses. Because Defender runs in an isolated "sandbox," rogue code can be executed without affecting the rest of the system.

There's now tamper protection to prevent malicious apps from changing settings, and Defender stops fileless-malware attacks with a memory-integrity feature that prevents malicious code from being injected into running RAM. It also screens email attachments for malicious code. Quick scans are a click away from the front page of the Windows Defender Security Center, which you can access by clicking the shield icon in the System Tray at the bottom right of your screen.

Full or specialized scans are a click or two beyond that. When a USB drive is plugged in, Defender scans its contents; you can also scan any file by right-clicking on it in the Windows Explorer file manager.

The rest of Microsoft's Windows Security Center features run whether or not Defender or another antivirus program is protecting your system, but they're worth mentioning. Attacks on the system's start-up sequence can be stopped by Microsoft's Secure Boot feature, and the SmartScreen filter blocks links to untrustworthy websites from Outlook, Edge and Internet Explorer but not third-party browsers like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.

Microsoft's OneDrive online file repository can hold copies of your key files to be recovered in case of an encrypting ransomware attack. While other antivirus programs have integrated game modes, Microsoft's can be accessed in the Gaming part of the main Windows Settings menu. Over the past two years, Windows Defender has improved to the point where it now offers malware protection as good as almost any free or paid antivirus program.

In all 26 monthly rounds of tests conducted in , and the first two months of by German lab AV-Test , Windows Defender detected either Defender still isn't as good as industry leaders Kaspersky or Norton , which detected all malware in all of AV-Test's , and so far evaluations, but it's finally within shouting distance. Not all these brands mentioned offer free antivirus software, but of those who do, Kaspersky comes out on top with perfect scores.

Next up is Bitdefender, which got all the widespread malware in those two-plus years but missed some zero-day bugs in three instances. While they detected either Windows Defender is also detecting fewer false positives than it used to, at least in AV-Test's evaluations.

It registered 21 false alarms in , but only 15 in