AV-Comparatives Consumer Performance Test October 2020

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Gandalf_The_Grey

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AV-Comparatives released their latest Performance Test Report for consumer security products under Microsoft Windows 10.

Performance Test October 2020 - AV-Comparatives

17 consumer products were tested regarding their impact on system performance. But keep in mind: Protection is more important than speed!

Fastest and slowest speeds revealed for 17 popular Windows antivirus programs

Independent, ISO-certified security testing lab AV-Comparatives has released the results of its 2020 H2 Performance (Speed) Test for consumer products. 17 anti-malware programs for Microsoft Windows 10 from popular vendors were put through their paces. These were, alphabetically: Avast, AVG, Avira, Bitdefender, ESET, F-Secure, G Data, K7, Kaspersky, McAfee, Microsoft, NortonLifeLock, Panda, Total AV, Total Defense, Trend Micro and Vipre.

The tested products were checked to see how much they slowed the test system down, compared to a PC without any antivirus software running. They were assigned one of four possible award categories, according to how well they performed in the test. From lowest to highest, the categories are: Tested, Standard, Advanced, and Advanced+.

The Performance Test checks the impact each tested program has on the computer’s speed of operation. In the past, antivirus programs have been criticised for slowing the user’s computer down too much. This test shows how successful vendors have been in preventing this. It uses performance-intensive tasks, such as copying and archiving files, and professional benchmarking software, to determine each product’s speed impact.

The Performance Test is part of AV-Comparatives’ Main Test Series for consumer products. The Consumer Test Series also includes the Real-World Protection Test and the Malware Protection Test. The former checks the ability of antivirus products to protect against Internet-borne malware. The Malware Protection Test verifies a product’s ability to protect against malicious files already on the system, on an external drive, or copied over the local area network. Together with the Performance Test, these tests provide an all-round view of a security product’s technical capabilities.

Like all AV-Comparatives’ public reports, the report of the 2020 Performance Test for consumer products can be downloaded free of charge from the institute’s website, www.av-comparatives.org.  AV-Comparatives is an independent testing lab based in Innsbruck, Austria, and has been publicly testing computer-security software since 2004. It is ISO 9001:2015 certified for the scope “Independent Tests of Anti-Virus Software”. It also holds the EICAR certification as a “Trusted IT-Security Testing Lab”.
 
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ForgottenSeer 89360

F-Secure is now lightest. I am not sure what changes they have made. We can also see TotalAV getting lighter - they now offer Identity Protection from Experian as well and have boosted malware detection. Together with the improved performance and if they ditch their marketing nuisance, they might enter the field of Not-fake AVs soon. Avast and AVG have become a lot lighter and Avira has made a huge performance improvement as well. Trend Micro has become lighter than Norton.

All this is just a comparison of last 2 tests with this one. I am currently testing AVG and can't speak about any other product.
 

upnorth

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Yes, but they still weren't the lightest. Maybe as Avira has improved performance, all products based on Avira (F-Secure and TotalAV in this case) got an indirect performance boost too. @upnorth probably knows if F-Secure has made any additional improvements.
I did even personal felt right after their latest update to version 17.9 somewhat of improvement in speed, but as I said then, I normally don't click around too much in the UI ( user interface ). Also many new or latest tweaks seems to settle over time and ain't noted much. I do know F-Secure added a few new options, but how much that in itself really made a difference all in all and for most users, I can't say and the version in this test is 17.8, not the latest 17.9. Still, it works very nice on my own machine/system just as before.
 
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ForgottenSeer 89360

This test also confirms many facts I've outlined in my reviews published here. I've claimed Norton is going downhill and today, we can see they are almost last in performance. I've claimed Bitdefender, Avast, McAfee and Eset are light and this can be observed here, they hold the leading positions. In my comparison Bitdefender vs Eset I've claimed they come close and according to this test, they do.
 
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ForgottenSeer 89360

What's going on with Eset? it seems that their deep behavioral inspection brakes a litte bit the system.
Erm if you look at the points, not the positions, you'll see that they haven't really become much heavier, it's just others have made some vast improvements. Might be that their new, more aggressive machine learning takes its toll on performance.
 
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Back3

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I've used a combo of F-Secure antivirus and SpyShelter Premium for the last few months and it is indeed fast. They tested F-Secure SAFE which has more bells and whistles that I dont need with SS. Both versions are fast, but if you don't need banking protection and the F-Secure extensions, the basic version is even faster on my PC.
 

plat

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Microsoft? Have you learned nothing in all these past years of your participation? Dead last.

The test machine was referred to as "high end"--an i7 of unknown clocks, 8 GB of unknown RAM and SSDs of unknown specs.

To me, this machine is somewhere in the "average" range. Depending on use scenarios, it could go either way. I don't think you can pigeon-hole such things. In fact, the Lab makes a disclaimer--what does it say? What everyone right here has been saying for forever: Try the antivirus on YOUR machine; this is only a demo.
 
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ForgottenSeer 89360

Microsoft? Have you learned nothing in all these past years of your participation? Dead last.

The test machine was referred to as "high end"--an i7 of unknown clocks, 8 GB of unknown RAM and SSDs of unknown specs.

To me, this machine is somewhere in the "average" range. Depending on use scenarios, it could go either way. I don't think you can pigeon-hole such things. In fact, the Lab makes a disclaimer--what does it say? What everyone right here has been saying for forever: Try the antivirus on YOUR machine; this is only a demo.
I did try for myself on several machines and performance was far cry from being great and even further cry from performance of other, free or cheap products. It's the worst I've ever observed and I have a system at the pretty high end of the scale too. End of the day, everyone decides for themselves what they want.
 

Lord Ami

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F-Secure (beta) is running neatly here as well!

I too have found it to have gotten somehow lighter over time.
Probably due to Security Cloud improvements (+ other components). I've not seen that many hiccups with newer/brand new files (e.g unsigned .exe files). This used to be the common slow-case for me. The whole Explorer window would just stall/hang up at times... not cool.
I believe they also mentioned performance improvement in one of the changelogs (but I am unable to find it now).

All in all: Solid product!
 

upnorth

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I believe they also mentioned performance improvement in one of the changelogs (but I am unable to find it now).
Here you go mate : (y)
 

Nautilus

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hmmmm... archiving / unarchiving and progranm uninstalling , the slowest factors on norton 360 ( lifelock ).....I don't think so! I do not notice ANY slowing down when unzipping / zipping folders nor when I uninstall programs , I use 7zip and hi bit uninstaller for these tasks.
 

SeriousHoax

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File copying, Archiving/Unarchiving, Installing/Uninstalling/Applications these activities are not something you would do on a regular basis so this three are less important for most users in my opinion.
Launching Applications, Browsing websites are the most important because it is something all of us do every single day followed by occasional downloading files. According to the chart all AV performed great in these categories. Though I'm sure even these varies slightly from product to product. The tests done by AV-Test gives us a better picture on this.
I can't say about app launching performance of Avast/AVG and G-Data but I can confirm Trend Micro is definitely slower in both first run and subsequent run as the test shows.
Some things nobody tests is the CPU and disk activity of AV when you browse the internet and when the device is in idle. AV which does HTTPS scanning use more CPU while browsing which may result in faster battery draining. This metric should be very helpful for laptop users but there's no professional test available as far as I'm concerned about AV's impact on battery life.
 
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ForgottenSeer 89360

AVG/Avast in Idle

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AVG/Avast whilst running Octane browser performance test in the background:
1605550986405.png
 

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