Hi and welcome to this beautiful forum.
For the advice I agree with @Sr. Normal and, in addition, I can suggest you to install also Bitdefender 60 virus scanner, which is a quick but efficient scanner that always runs in background.
First, welcome to the forums Second, you should really make the question as a new thread in one of the Software sections, as I believe this area is for simple introductions. Last, what do you mean you haven't had anything "reliable"? Before any of us get into any real discussion, no AV software catches everything. Also, malware can be made to be very resistant to removal and may take a lot of effort or even more than one program to get rid of. That isn't an indication of the AV being unreliable, that just means malware has gotten a lot more complicated and persistent.
Most AV's which are always heavily advertised are reliable, even your favorite antivirus as you post is really good.
The thing only varies is how the performance works and what are you needs though.
From simplistic setup (Free: Bitdefender Free AV, Panda Cloud AV, Avira Free; Paid/Trial: Norton) until to a little bit complex features for better tweaks (Emsisoft, Avast, Comodo and many more) you may choose and research for reviews.