McAfee Ultimate 2025
- Thread starter Shadowra
- Start date
It is advised to take all reviews with a grain of salt. In extreme cases some reviews use dramatization for entertainment purposes.
It does seem tempting to use. I just wonder if it'll be 'too simple' - saying that, I never really tweak!
Suppose the only issue is FP's. They still seem a little on the high side.
It is too simple, McAfee keeps GTI, JTI and RealProtect in safe defaults, consumers cannot change these settings. The download advisor components uses slightly more aggressive GTI level.
In terms of false positives, I haven’t really seen such, the false positives test AVC includes websites as well, it’s not only file detections. I don’t agree with AVC opinion that “malicious pages should be blocked one by one instead of blocking the whole domain”.
It’s why I don’t really follow their work.
That being said, I played today with modifying files, it seems that despite being cloud-based, changing files and hashes doesn’t void McAfee detection.
Overall, pleased with the testing results.
They all require additional installation or configuration online, they don’t just come enabled by default. VPN needs to be manually enabled.
Ah cool, the last thing I want is all that setup on other family members PC's. It's one of the reasons why I won't use the My Kaspersky anymore!
The core product is very lean, they’ve removed a lot of bloatware and everything in the product, even the trackers remover has been rewritten. There was a period when McAfee was rewriting old features and adding them, for example security report was recently reintroduced and McAfee will be improving it throughout 2025.
I've already jumped on board to give it a try. The lack of configurability is stunning. It's about as simple and set-and-forget as the built-in Microsoft Defender interface. I love McAfee's new branding, however. Beautiful typography and tasteful illustrations reinforce a clean, friendly aesthetic. I would be even more content with the addition of dark mode.
It's blazingly fast and light. Installation, startup, and everything else are accomplished right away. AV-Comparatives' last Performance Test published in May ranked it as the single lowest impact product on their system:
WebAdvisor is also a welcome addon for me, which I remember from way back (SiteAdvisor). First impressions are all around quite good.
It's blazingly fast and light. Installation, startup, and everything else are accomplished right away. AV-Comparatives' last Performance Test published in May ranked it as the single lowest impact product on their system:
WebAdvisor is also a welcome addon for me, which I remember from way back (SiteAdvisor). First impressions are all around quite good.
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Maybe feedback to them about dark mode? Sounds like they take advice/suggestions on board
I liked it too, it was very clear and quick to show notifications. Unlike Vipre, you had to open a whole page to get an alert, which was good at the time lol.
It worked, I did a clean install of McAfee and it worked, and it installed very quickly. McAfee was by far the fastest AV I've installed to date, it didn't even take a minute. It's incredible, super light and has no impact on the system. An AV completely in the Cloud and with unlimited VPN. This is how all AVs should work. It was my first AV that I used back in the 90s VirusScan what nostalgia people after 27 years lol.
I haven't had a single problem at all, I let it do a full system scan out of interest & didn't find any problems - It's so light I wonder at times if its just a GUI that does nothing Sadly my bother died in December & my sis-in-law is calling in today & going to check her laptop over & going to install it on that & when I go over to her place its going on the Desktop my brother used as it seems pretty fool proof - She is a clever lady but it was my brother who had computing interests - At this point: Seems McAfee is the answer to my dreams for the PC's i look after for others 
Might have to get a One Hundred Million use licence.
Sadly my bother died in December & my sis-in-law is calling in today & going to check her laptop over & going to install it on that & when I go over to her place its going on the Desktop my brother used as it seems pretty fool proof - She is a clever lady but it was my brother who had computing interests - At this point: Seems McAfee is the answer to my dreams for the PC's i look after for others Might have to get a One Hundred Million use licence.
I just wanna clarify, that even though McAfee states it has been upgraded to a fully cloud based architecture, this is true, but the cloud is not be-all end-all. McAfee uses a very small file (similar to the Trend Micro Smart Scan pattern) which hosts local heuristics and other rules that quickly identify malware, even when the file is new/unknown or there is no connection.
These rules are highly generic and optimised, and provide “quick-win” in terms of detection, reducing the cloud dependency.
The size of this file is about 30MB.
In addition, RealProtect which combines pre-execution (static analysis, including on raw bytes) and post execution machine learning also has local models which are used as a fallback when there is no connection to the cloud.
So despite being heavily cloud-based, McAfee is not useless offline. All in all, the architecture is very similar to the Symantec version of Norton (where Static Data Scanner was used) and the Trend Micro Smart Scan + Advanced Threat Scan Engine.
These rules are highly generic and optimised, and provide “quick-win” in terms of detection, reducing the cloud dependency.
The size of this file is about 30MB.
In addition, RealProtect which combines pre-execution (static analysis, including on raw bytes) and post execution machine learning also has local models which are used as a fallback when there is no connection to the cloud.
So despite being heavily cloud-based, McAfee is not useless offline. All in all, the architecture is very similar to the Symantec version of Norton (where Static Data Scanner was used) and the Trend Micro Smart Scan + Advanced Threat Scan Engine.
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Sorry to hear about your brother.I haven't had a single problem at all, I let it do a full system scan out of interest & didn't find any problems - It's so light I wonder at times if its just a GUI that does nothing
Hopefully Mcafee keeps it up and it's consistently good. The last thing we need is an influx of people using this to only find 6 months down the line it's all going backwards!
Yeah I noticed that the Malware protection test by AVC showed it at 79.3% 'offline' - which technically puts it 3rd bottom. But still...
Yeah but from the tested products, only Trend Micro and McAfee are signature-less. Trend Micro still receives daily update to the Smart Scan Agent pattern, as well as daily updates to the behavioural monitoring (AEGIS) which at Trend Micro is predominantly rules/policy based.
The McAfee local content is updated every now and then, it is a NGAV technically. So being bottom 4th in terms of offline detection given the architecture, is still an impressive result.
Almost everything else is bloated, old school AVs, with databases that range from 100 to 600 mb (2 copies usually stored) and with hourly updates.
Is there a free trial for the edition with parental control? Is parental control available for both Windows and Android? The McAfee website offers a free trial for Essential Edition, which doesn't include parental control. The McAfee India website doesn't even offer a free trial.
Parental Controls seem to be provided under Safe Family, which is available for iOS, Android and Windows. It is included as well with Total Protection (at least in the UK) but I am not familiar with the trials.
The only thing that confuses me a little is the names of the products themselves.
UK: https://www.mcafee.com/en-gb/index.html
No mention of total protection - which is what seems to be offered everyone online to buy?
But it is buried away in the footer: https://www.mcafee.com/en-gb/antivirus/mcafee-total-protection.html
UK: https://www.mcafee.com/en-gb/index.html
No mention of total protection - which is what seems to be offered everyone online to buy?
But it is buried away in the footer: https://www.mcafee.com/en-gb/antivirus/mcafee-total-protection.html
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