Advice Request Lightest Free antivirus for lowend laptop

[rain2reign]

A better question should be what are the specifications of the "low-end" laptop? For example: for a laptop with 4GB RAM, nearly every solution is heavy. Even if the AV solution uses "good ram" mechanics. Think of Emsisoft being one such an example. Why, you ask? In short, all the definitions and such are loaded directly into the RAM itself. So when a scan takes place, whether it be manual or periodic, or real-time protection detection, then it would be lightning fast in both cases.

Think of a scan that now takes 5 minutes to finish, that otherwise would take up to 30 minutes give-or-take.

For a laptop of that specifications. I would advise both [1] a manual RAM upgrade to 8GB, which is an easy thing to do oneself for RAM upgrades. While no tech knowledge is required beyond getting the right RAM sticks, so you don't get scammed. And [2] picking one according to use-case or preferences. If you for some reason are not able to upgrade, and have a 4GB RAM laptop, then I would stick with Windows Defender and use something like Windows DefenderUI from a different thread on this forum and set that to recommended. As it's the most user-friendly option for a majority of people (in my honest opinion).

Otherwise, for sake of having options: while Bitdefender Free is the least worrisome out of the free AV bunch. My advice would be either Avira Free or Kaspersky Free AV solutions on that specific hardware.

My point is not to dissuade people, or be insultingly blunt about it. However, in my experience, and I have advised hardware for many specialized, and hobby, oriented cases for more than 10 years. There is never a thing like the best, but there is a thing as the most suitable. To give a more accurate advice, I'd need to know what are the specifications of the laptop, as well as the use-case of how it's used.

Option X may be the most recommended in general, but could be the worst for a specific use-case.

 

[bayasdev]

Microsoft Defender is heavy on CPU and I/O so for better performance I'd recommend you either Avira Free or Panda Free (worse protection than Defender but it's really light).

Kaspersky Free, BD Free and Avast/AVG Free offer a more balanced protection but it comes at a noticeable cost on low-end hardware.

 

[Captain Holly]

I have a Lenovo laptop, running Windows 11 v. 21H2 with a 1TB hard drive and 8 gb of ram. BD Free and Windows Defender both use 130mb RAM, give or take a few. I just like how BD works better for me. It is much easier to understand and has better phishing and ransomware protection. It works fine for me but maybe not for everyone else.

C.H.

 

[Nightwalker]

Why antivirus uses so much RAM - And why that is actually a good thing!

Learn why freeing RAM doesn't necessarily speed up your computer. In reality it's often quite the opposite.

blog.emsisoft.com

I think we need a bot to post this link everytime someone make the infamous " low memory ram usage = light | high memory usage = heavy" remark in a thread

 

[Digmor Crusher]

I think we need a bot to post this link everytime someone make the infamous " low memory ram usage = light | high memory usage = heavy" remark in a thread

And.. people who post that a particular AV is light/heavy on their computer need to stop assuming that it will be like that for everyone.

 

[monkeylove]

Besides memory, you can also probably consider a benchmark program. Here are my results for some free AVs (without GPU test three times, made sure nothing else was running):

Microsoft Defender: 855, 860, 855
Avast: 855, 866, 874
Bitdefender: 872, 875, 880
Avast One: 847, 851, 846

I had results for Kaspersky in the past, and it was similar to Avast. YMMV.

The hard part is that I had to do an install/uninstall (using the cleaning tools provided by the developers).

 

[M4RT1NE2]

It all depends on the specifications of your laptop. As for the lightest free av program I can safely recommend Avira, Kaspersky Free and BD Free (currently I use BD IS and it is ok). When I was using Windows Defender I had the problem with fans all the time

 

[roger_m]

As already mentioned RAM usage has no relationship to system performance. The only case where RAM usage matters is if your computer doesn't have enough RAM, e.g. 4GB or less, otherwise it's not even worth caring about. I recommend ESET and K7. They are two of the lightest antiviruses there are and should have very minimal system impact on low end hardware. ESET provides better protection, but K7 is still decent. In my experience they are noticably lighter than some of the other products that have been recommended (such as Avast, Bitdefender and F-Secure), while still providing good protection. Because antivirus performance can vary from one computer to the next, the only way to know how either one will perform for you is to install a trial version. Having said that, both ESET and K7 should have very minimal system performance on pretty much any computer they are installed on.

 

[Nevi]

1 Wisevector Stop X
2 Avira
3 Avast with custom install where you only take what you need.

 

[SpiderWeb]

Eset and K7. Eset is written in assembly language, close to metal as possible. K7 was written with Indian consumers in mind who have less powerful computers. I use K7 on my M1 Mac. Zero performance impact. It's so light, its impact is not even listed in Activity Monitor which is the mac version of Task Manager.

 

[rain2reign]

A little note, however, to the various replies in this thread. This thread is being asked about recommendations among Free Anti-virus/-malware solutions. Not paid nor free trials either! So software solution like ESET, K7, <you-name-it> Internet Security and <you-name-it> Total Protection should be struck off the recommendation list by de facto.

 

[roger_m]

Considering this is for a free antivirus. Avast/AVG and the new version of Avira are light. I haven't used the new Avira much yet but it seems to be quite light. Avast is light, but not as light as the paid solutions I previously recommended,

 

[blueblackwow65]

Wisevector only

 

[klaken]

how about immunet?
Last time I saw him he was very light without clam av.

 

[Nevi]

how about immunet?
Last time I saw him he was very light without clam av.

I think Immunet is dangerous to use as only antivirus. The places I have seen some use it, it has been as a combo with another application.

 

[Divine_Barakah]

I have been running Avast on a laptop with 4 GBs of ram and I had no issues.
If you have HDD, then Trend Micro is our best bet. For some reason it works flawlessly on HDDs without freezing the system.

 

[TairikuOkami]

I would suggest to test those in this quest: Panda, Adaware, 360TSE, WiseVector.

how about immunet?
Last time I saw him he was very light without clam av.

Last time I tested it, it was taking 1.3GB, I do not consider RAM usage to be such a deal breaker, but it proves, that it just is not optimized. It is provided as it is.

 

[Kuttz]

FortiClient would be my pick for such extreme performance limited systems. From my last usage experience, it had a very good web filtering, excellent signature protection and hardly use any system resources. If wanted you can complement it with EXE Radar Pro to lockdown the OS, Apps environment for a bullet proof security still not hurting system performance.

 

[TairikuOkami]

FortiClient would be my pick for such extreme performance limited systems.

Was not it discontinued like years ago? I really liked it, but it can no longer be installed.

 

[Kuttz]

Was not it discontinued like years ago? I really liked it, but it can no longer be installed.

Yes seems true. After I started using ESET, its been a long time since I last tried them and hence wasn't aware about their present status.