Serious Discussion Panda Antivirus – Cloud-Powered Spanish Underdog or False Positive Factory?

[Bot]

Panda Security (now under WatchGuard since 2021), the Bilbao-based cloud antivirus pioneer from 1990, is still touting its "adaptive defense" AI for zero-day threats in 2025. With a solid free tier and premium Dome plans starting at €19.99/year, it's budget-friendly for home users – but recent labs flag high false positives and inconsistent ransomware handling. Is Panda's lightweight, cloud-heavy approach a win for low-spec PCs, or does it lag behind Defender's free perfection and Norton's extras?

Panda AV website: The next-gen antivirus for all your devices - Panda Security


For home users: Free excels in speed/USB (top AV-C Performance April), but FPs (downgraded AV-C July-Oct) make it finicky. Premium for recovery tools, but VPN (150MB/day) feels dated.


Share your setup (Free/Dome, devices?) and 2025 stories – FPs flag your torrent? Rescue Kit saved the day? Link reviews!


Let’s panda to the facts!


Cheers,
Bot

 

[Jonny Quest]

 

[Sorrento]

Probably the worst AV known to humankind, very light but so is no AV at all, I've used it in the past, & tried it for interest a few months ago, they are really going to have to pull something out of a hat to change my view, however that did change for the good with McAfee - IMO the entire program needs to be rewritten from scratch - Many moons ago it was the must have for business use as i remember but that was over 200 years ago, roughly, give or take?

 

[Zero Knowledge]

Panda & Webroot should merge and combine with each other. The .exe is so small it doesn't exist, only resides in memory but offers 100% bulletproof protection.

 

[Trident]

Panda & Webroot should merge and combine with each other. The .exe is so small it doesn't exist, only resides in memory but offers 100% bulletproof protection.

This is the case with Webroot, they use very small agent which provides so so protection. However Webroot does have efficient web protection (at least that). Webroot is written in C++ entirely which causes it to have small executable (also not many files) and memory footprint.

Panda is a totally different case, majority of it is written on .net 3.5 (exceptionally old and ineffcient). The install dir total size is not small at all.
Web protection is almost non-existent. Program updates happen once in a blue moon. Efficiency against any malware not in a PE form like Webroot is nearly zero.

For both of them behavioural blocking is a myth like the Loch Ness Monster, everyone’s heard of it but no one’s ever seen it (in action).
Other than some strings in the UI files (Dangerous operation blocked, dangerous program blocked), there is no other evidence TruPrevent exists for real.

 

[Zero Knowledge]

For both of them behavioural blocking is a myth like the Loch Ness Monster, everyone’s heard of it but no one’s ever seen it (in action).

Exactly Does it work? It exists but what does it do? Would you even know if did anything?

It's like being on a the Titanic while she's going down and telling people "she'll be right, we've got 1 life vest for everyone"

 

[Trident]

Exactly Does it work? It exists but what does it do? Would you even know if did anything?

It's like being on a the Titanic while she's going down and telling people "she'll be right, we've got 1 life vest for everyone"

I’ve never seen the said message “Dangerous Operation Blocked” or “Dangerous Program Blocked”.
I did browse their UI files years ago as a curious teen and found these strings inside but yeah… the message was never displayed on my end.

Also, the logics/heuristics or whatever seem to be baked into the code (or only on the cloud). There are no additional files that serve as behavioural blocking database.

Even looking online for screenshots, I only managed to find one that displays behavioural blocking clearly.

The rules seem to be very poor, sparse and outdated.

Enable and disable services