Battle 360 Essential/Total Security Free vs Avira Free Antivirus

[videogamer1500]

360 Essential uses the Avira Engine and 360 Total Security uses Avira and Bitdefender. Avira free is well Avira's own engine of course. 360 Essential and 360 Total Security has advertisements and Avira free does but not as intrusive. Which antivirus is the better one overall?

360 Total Security includes "optimization tools" while 360 essential is just the antivirus. Both 360 versions have the same level of security in terms of features.

Even though I can, I feel like living on free trials seems like a waste of time and I rather just use a free antivirus instead of looking for 3-9 month trials.

Reason I am deciding between these two rather than the obvious choices of Kaspersky free and Bitdefender free as because of my good experience with Fsecure, I want to prefer an antivirus which uses the Avira engine. Avast is own by AVG and they sell their customer's data on the web it is a known thing so I refuse to even mention Avast anymore.

 

[videogamer1500]

360 TS works fine for me, with no issues and is lighter than most other antiviruses. While it receives very regular bug fixes, which would suggest that it is a very buggy product, I've actually never found it to buggy. It has minor issues with false positives, which is not a big deal, as it's very easy to whitelist files, unlike with most antiviruses. If the realtime protection detects a threat, I am given the option to whitelist the file. If I download something suspicious, it is automatically quarantined. But, I receive an alert, which gives me the option to restore the file from quarantine and whitelist it. I really wish that more antiviruses made it easy to whitelist files.

The only major con for me with 360 TS is the ads in the free version (although they can be blocked). This is why I am a paid user.

Yes, the cleanup modules are not needed. But at least they are safe to use and work very well. When 360 TS was first released I didn't like its cleanup functions, as I found it to be too aggressive in what it wanted to disable. For example, it would want to disable the scheduled task to create Restore Points. However over time the it's become less aggressive with regards to what it wants to disable.

I've got both IObit Malware Fighter 8 and Bitdefender installed on my test computer. When doing a manual scan with both a very large collection of malware and a large collection of PUPs, IMF detects more threats in both cases. If tested against new malware, quite possibly Bitdefender will do better and I'm sure the behaviour blocker in IMF is terrible.

While 360 may not do as well as Avira itself, its own signatures are excellent. If you have a look at Virus Total scan results for threats tested in the Malware Hub, usually 360 is one of the very first antiviruses to detect new threats, along with ESET and Kaspersky for example.

360 Total Security/essential and Comodo Firewall not only play nicely together, but they use less than 100mb of ram on idle and that is total combined between the two programs. 360 Total security only uses 50-60 mb of ram on my computer. In comparison that makes 360 total security/essental 4 times lighter than Fsecure and 2 times lighter than Fsecure when using Comodo Firewall with it.

 

[ChoiceVoice]

okay, 360 stopped doing testing at av-test org labs in 2017, when they scored a 1 out of 6 in protection for their own engine. back then they had the bitdefender engine as an addition and scored a much better 4 out of 6 with it. but we can see bitdefender in the same test scored a 6 out of 6 (that means 360 detected 67% compared to bitdefenders 100% - a significant difference). so using bitdefenders engine and sigs do not necessarily equate to bitdefender's level of protection. that was my point earlier with the new addition of avira instead of bitdefender. and as i said, 360 stopped testing in 2017, while avira tests every year and is always 5.5-6 out of 6.

Test antivirus software Qihoo 360

The current tests of antivirus software from Qihoo 360 of AV-TEST, the leading international and independent service provider for antivirus software and malware.

www.av-test.org

Test antivirus software Bitdefender

The current tests of antivirus software from Bitdefender of AV-TEST, the leading international and independent service provider for antivirus software and malware.

www.av-test.org

Test antivirus software Avira

The current tests of antivirus software from Avira of AV-TEST, the leading international and independent service provider for antivirus software and malware.

www.av-test.org

and i see at av compar. 360 hasn't been tested since 2014. avira is tested every year, and passes with high grades.

 

[TairikuOkami]

360 stopped doing testing at av-test org labs in 2017

They stopped testing it, because 360 cheated.

but they use less than 100mb of ram on idle and that is total combined between the two programs

Note, that windows task manager is very reserved, when it comes to showing memory usage. Thus the reason, people often wonder, why PC uses 2GB RAM, when it shows only like 700MB in processes. For example Discord: Windows shows 320MB used, PH shows 400MB used (but 620MB for real).

 

[ChoiceVoice]

They stopped testing it, because 360 cheated.

exactly. it is a marvel to me that these companies still have users.

Antivirus test labs call out Chinese security company as cheat

Chinese antivirus firm Qihoo 360 Technology today was censured by three major testing organizations for cheating on the evaluations.

www.computerworld.com

 

[TairikuOkami]

it is a marvel to me that these companies still have users.

Everyone makes mistakes, in this case a marketing division. In China, results are more important than means. But they shook it off, just like Iobit.

 

[ChoiceVoice]

Everyone makes mistakes, in this case a marketing division. In China, results are more important than means. But they shook it off, just like Iobit.

iobit's mistake was illegal. iobit broke the law and there would have been charges and jail time if it occurred outside of china. 360 just acted unethically. as i said, why would i trust my system to a company that breaks the law, or acts unethically?

" In China, results are more important than means."

i think that could be said of the hell's angels or any criminal organization as well.

 

[TairikuOkami]

why would i trust my system to a company that breaks the law, or acts unethically?

That sounds like every company in the world, but I get it, I boycott Nestle because of it as well.

 

[ChoiceVoice]

That sounds like every company in the world, but I get it, I boycott Nestle because of it as well.

and how did nestle break the law? and if they did, you bet.

 

[TairikuOkami]

and how did nestle break the law?

Killing babies for profit, trying to monetize water, just the usual.

 

[ChoiceVoice]

Killing babies for profit, trying to monetize water, just the usual.

thanks for the intel. no more chocolate bars from them for me . but still, now that i look that up, it seems they are facing charges for their wrongdoing in india. those responsible will likely go to jail - but i'll have to follow that story to see if it end that way. it is promising that they are not above the law and are facing criminal charges. and you can't hide in Switzerland, they would extradite you to india, a commonwealth nation. wrongdoing yes, and also repercussions and the quest for justice.

 

[roger_m]

so using bitdefenders engine and sigs do not necessarily equate to bitdefender's level of protection. that was my point earlier with the new addition of avira instead of bitdefender.

Avira is not a new addition. They previously used both Avira and Bitdefender signatures if you enabled them. It has been my experience too, that usually programs that use signatures from another AV, don't have the same detection rate as the original product. However, due to 360's excellent signatures, I'm not too concerned if its detection rate from Avira signatures is not as good as Avira itself.

it is a marvel to me that these companies still have users.

In my case, 360 is just about the only antivirus which suits my needs, because it is extremely light and gives me the option to choose what to do when an infected file is found. I won't use any antivirus which auto quarantines files.

 

[videogamer1500]

They stopped testing it, because 360 cheated.

Note, that windows task manager is very reserved, when it comes to showing memory usage. Thus the reason, people often wonder, why PC uses 2GB RAM, when it shows only like 700MB in processes. For example Discord: Windows shows 320MB used, PH shows 400MB used (but 620MB for real).

I have 32gb of ram so the programs should use more ram than usual so the fact it uses so low in my computer is a plus. But you right task manager is reserved.

 

[MegenM]

I am using Bitdefender Total Security (Premium) with automatic profiles enabled. Never faced any issues. So I hope Bitdefender free version will also give you the same but a stripped down experience.

 

[jackuars]

360 is one of the best antiviruses I've had the pleasure of using, while I was using it. Over time my preferences changed and I use a different product now. My choice between the two would be 360.

 

[Divine_Barakah]

@roger_m Thank you for the detailed information about 360. I just have one question if you do not mind. How good is their firewall in comparison to others?

 

[roger_m]

@roger_m Thank you for the detailed information about 360. I just have one question if you do not mind. How good is their firewall in comparison to others?

It's terrible. It just gives alerts about untrusted connections, with the option to terminate the connection, rather than not allowing the connection until you make a choice.

 

[videogamer1500]

It's terrible. It just gives alerts about untrusted connections, with the option to terminate the connection, rather than not allowing the connection until you make a choice.

That's why I disabled it and used Comodo with it. Their firewall is based off of Glasswire which isn't really a firewall in the first place. I could of chosen Windows Firewall Control to modify Windows Defender, but I think using Comodo is much easier and requires less tweaking on my part. If you guys want an easy boost in security without using any other software use windows firewall control by malwarebytes

Windows Firewall Control

Windows Firewall Control is a powerful tool which extends the functionality of Windows Firewall by adding outbound notifications and many other features.

www.binisoft.org

 

[videogamer1500]

I am using Bitdefender Total Security (Premium) with automatic profiles enabled. Never faced any issues. So I hope Bitdefender free version will also give you the same but a stripped down experience.

Does Bitdefender free allow you to manually configuration exceptions as such as the pro version does? And how well does it play with Comodo Firewall? Those are the important questions I need to figure out the answer too before I try that.

 

[MegenM]

Does Bitdefender free allow you to manually configuration exceptions as such as the pro version does? And how well does it play with Comodo Firewall? Those are the important questions I need to figure out the answer too before I try that.

Yes, the free version allows manual exceptions. It does not have profiles etc in the free version. Profiles in Bitdefender is automatically switching modes as per the load on your system. I haven't ever used with Comodo.

 

[Cortex]

Avira is not a new addition. They previously used both Avira and Bitdefender signatures if you enabled them. It has been my experience too, that usually programs that use signatures from another AV, don't have the same detection rate as the original product. However, due to 360's excellent signatures, I'm not too concerned if its detection rate from Avira signatures is not as good as Avira itself.

In my case, 360 is just about the only antivirus which suits my needs, because it is extremely light and gives me the option to choose what to do when an infected file is found. I won't use any antivirus which auto quarantines files.

Your enthusiasm for 360 as a trusted member has prompted me to re-evaluate 360, at least when I've finished evaluated K7, which I'm really liking. though I like AV's which I can use on others PC's too