Malwarebytes Premium 4.0.1 - A Worthy Contender

Product name
Malwarebytes Premium 4.0.1
Installation (rating)
3.00 star(s)
User interface (rating)
4.00 star(s)
Accessibility notes
Very modern but a bit difficult to navigate.
Almost non existant customization of the protection quality (except for the exploit protection)
Performance (rating)
1.00 star(s)
Core Protection (rating)
4.00 star(s)
Proactive protection (rating)
4.00 star(s)
Additional Protection notes
The detection of zero day malware is probably one of the best and altough it missed two samples it prevented them for doing damage (in this case it blocked the payload and stopped ransomware from encrypting and then deleting the old files)

Web protection is quite good, it managed to block all 10 of my malicous sites, however, it only managed to block half or so of the 10 phishing sites (The extension did not improve the detection rate)
Browser protection (rating)
3.00 star(s)
Positives
    • Minimal setup required
    • Lightning fast scans
    • Easy to use
    • Simple and non-intrusive
    • Ransomware protection
    • Detects or blocks in the wild malware
    • Effective malware removal
    • Well designed, clear and easy to use interface
    • Multi-layer protection approach
Negatives
    • Advanced users may want more control
    • Short on configuration options
    • Noticeable negative system impact
    • Resource intensive tasks
    • Not as many features as some competitors
    • Can be complex in some situations
    • Can slow down your browsing speed
    • Slows down browsing the Internet
    • Opening, copying or saving a file is noticeably slower
    • Browser extension extras can be unreliable
    • Significant impact while playing games
Time spent using product
Reviewed over a 30-day period
Computer specs
Lenovo IdeaCentre Y710 Cube

Intel Core i5-6400RAM

16 GBGPU

geForce GTX 1070

Lenovo 364A (U3E1)

C: drive
Manufacturer: SanDisk
Interface: SATA
Capacity: 119 GB

D: drive
Manufacturer: Seagate
Interface: SATA
Capacity: 931 GBMonitor (Display)PnP
Recommended for
  1. All types of users
Overall rating
4.00 star(s)

EndangeredPootis

Level 10
Thread author
Verified
Well-known
Sep 8, 2019
461
Altough having pretty much no flaws, I find their practice of calling normal antivirus "dumb" and the performance impact the only reasons I wont recommend their product, considering "normal" antivirus not only have the same features (and more) as MBAM, like AI/Machine Learning, exploit protection, ransomware protection etc, they still have a lower performance impact and better protection.
 

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Bryan320

Level 8
Oct 11, 2019
293
I love malwarebytes and have a lifetime key but i cannot stand how sluggish it makes my system. they have improved detection but they need to work on getting it to run lighter!! They have all the resources to do so not sure why it's been so heavy for so long...
 

blackice

Level 38
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Apr 1, 2019
2,731
If you only tested in a VM I would say that may be an issue with performance. I’ve run Malwarebytes with WD and the only thing it slowed down dramatically was file transfers. It also slowed down programs loading, but it didn’t seem like what you experienced. But, I am on an i7, so it that probably fits your comment on it’s impact.
 

EndangeredPootis

Level 10
Thread author
Verified
Well-known
Sep 8, 2019
461
If you only tested in a VM I would say that may be an issue with performance. I’ve run Malwarebytes with WD and the only thing it slowed down dramatically was file transfers. It also slowed down programs loading, but it didn’t seem like what you experienced. But, I am on an i7, so it that probably fits your comment on it’s impact.
I have personally used it on my host system aswell because I have a one year license for it, and it slowed down that a lot aswell, the most out of any antivirus infact, and ive used many.
 

Mahesh Sudula

Level 17
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Sep 3, 2017
818
PROS: Good matured signatures, Great anti phishing with extension, PUP detection is good
Cons:
Ransom protection is slow n delayed, triggers upon encryption in most cases | Sophos
Poor self protection + seen ransom encrypting some of the MBAM files itself | Sophos
Not enough powerful to use as standalone AV.Need to combine with some AV.
Free version is enough + Free av + MBAM extension delivers better results over PRO VERSION
 

Nightwalker

Level 24
Verified
Honorary Member
Top Poster
Content Creator
Well-known
May 26, 2014
1,339
I like Malwarebytes Premium and I think it is much better than people give it credit for, imo it is much better at keeping a machine clean than most antivirus solutions nowadays.

The problem with Malwarebytes Premium is it ridiculous system performance impact, it is noticeable even in my Ryzen 5 3600 + 16 GB ram 3200 mhz + SSD NvME machine.
 

blackice

Level 38
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Apr 1, 2019
2,731
I have personally used it on my host system aswell because I have a one year license for it, and it slowed down that a lot aswell, the most out of any antivirus infact, and ive used many.
Ah, that makes sense then. If it’s bad on the host it is terrible in a VM I’m sure. Not a good look for them.

I like Malwarebytes Premium and I think it is much better than people give it credit, imo it is much better at keeping a machine clean than most antivirus solutions nowadays.

The problem with Malwarebytes Premium is it ridiculous system performance impact, it is noticeable even in my Ryzen 5 3600 + 16 GB ram 3200 mhz + SSD NvME machine.
I didn’t realize the system impact until I loaded a game and iTunes without it, while testing Bitdefender of all things, and moving a big folder. It was night and day! I was very surprised.
 

Protomartyr

Level 7
Sep 23, 2019
314
I didn’t realize the system impact until I loaded a game and iTunes without it, while testing Bitdefender of all things, and moving a big folder. It was night and day! I was very surprised.

Did you have Malwarebytes Premium running alongside Bitdefender?

I'm currently running Windows Defender (with ConfigureDefender set to Max) and Malwarebytes Premium (lifetime license) together on this laptop that has 8 GB of RAM. I run VMs on this machine so was wondering if perhaps disabling some of the real-time protection modules could help regain some performance.

What modules would you recommend I disable? At the minimum I'd like to keep the Web Protection module enabled at least.
 

blackice

Level 38
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Apr 1, 2019
2,731
Did you have Malwarebytes Premium running alongside Bitdefender?

I'm currently running Windows Defender (with ConfigureDefender set to Max) and Malwarebytes Premium (lifetime license) together on this laptop that has 8 GB of RAM. I run VMs on this machine so was wondering if perhaps disabling some of the real-time protection modules could help regain some performance.

What modules would you recommend I disable? At the minimum I'd like to keep the Web Protection module enabled at least.
I ran it with WD and only tried Bitdefender after the slowest file transfer ever using MB and WD. I think the web protection module is the most worthwhile module. If you are running it with something else you could probably disable everything else. I’m not sure if the ransomware protection slows things down or not, but you could try it too. I find programs launch much faster without the real-time protection on.
 

blackice

Level 38
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Apr 1, 2019
2,731
I ran it with WD and only tried Bitdefender after the slowest file transfer ever using MB and WD. I think the web protection module is the most worthwhile module. If you are running it with something else you could probably disable everything else. I’m not sure if the ransomware protection slows things down or not, but you could try it too. I find programs launch much faster without the real-time protection on.
To clarify, I have not run Malwarebytes Premium with Bitdefender, or anything other than WD. I do wonder how it is running on it’s own. @Nightwalker may know as he’s been using it recently.
 

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