Without reading the thread and only by reading the title, I already could predict without doubt Avast was going to win this battle. No surprises for me.
The perfect and best free antivirus doesn't exist. What's great for one person, is not good enough for the other. It's all personal taste on look and features, but enough discussions about that already on the forum.
I'm currently using Sophos and it serves me well. It is the best? I don't know. I've got no infections until now, so I'm a happy user. Is it the best of this year? Probably not looking at the limited amount of (visual) updates it got last year. (although a big one is coming in a few weeks/months but that aside).
Looking at the current ranking, it is no surprise that the big ones, Bitdefender and Avast (and Qihoo if you want), are on the top. But due to the large userbase they already have, it's also a bit misleading. Looking at the past year, Avast moved their behaviour detection into their new behaviour shield, so they made improvements for their products. But in the past months AdAware and Forticlient for example also got big new updates. Panda got (again) a new look. Not all of these are the most innovating or protection wise fantastic upgrades of course, but also these devs haven't been lazy the past year to try to improve their product. Bitdefender free on the other hand had a big makeover the past months, and they got all of the attention, while AdAware who have the same engine and that too got a complete new look still have 0 votes.
Looking at progress and movements of multiple vendors for there product in 2017, I would rank it different. When I read the sentence 'The best antivirus for 2017' I personnaly don't look at the name and features alone, but also at the progress they made compared to the 2016 version. I'm not saying they are in the end all of the same level of protection of course, but I miss this update aspect a bit in this thread, which is more a fanboy thread now. Just my view on this of course
