The best Home AV protection 2021-2022

[simmerskool]

It is certainly true that AV programs change over time. For example, they adapt to a new threat situation. However, a test from the past indicates how well the AV program was adapted to the threat situation at the time. The results of the past are therefore also decisive for the evaluation of an AV program.

Right but we also see that an excellent av can go "bad" after a mod, and visa versa but this thread analysis is averaging them together, it could make a current av look better or worse than it is performing at the moment, but then again, I for one am NOT changing av every month or 2 because of some av_test. I was just thinking out loud...

 

[Andy Ful]

As I read this thread, isn't there another variable, ie, eg, the Avast used in year2 or year3 is not necessarily the same Avast that was used in year1, ie, the vendors are "upgrading" or at least modifying their AV products every so often. Perhaps that is irrelevant, or is that just part of the averaging??

You cannot measure these changes over one year due to the insufficient number of samples. This is a similar problem as with differences between AVs contained in one cluster. It is possible to measure such changes when using a two-year period. When you compare the periods 2019-2020 with 2020-2022, two AVs significantly increased protection:

-------------------Missed samples
Norton 360..................12..... =
Avast...........................13..... +
Kaspersky....................18..... =
Microsoft...................*27.5.. =
McAfee ........................37.... +
Avira ............................43.... =

The "+" means improvement. The protection of other AVs did not change much (not measurable).

 

[simmerskool]

You cannot measure these changes over one year due to the insufficient number of samples. This is a similar problem as with differences between AVs contained in one cluster. It is possible to measure such changes when using a two-year period. When you compare the periods 2019-2020 with 2020-2022, two AVs significantly increased protection:

-------------------Missed samples
Norton 360..................12..... =
Avast...........................13..... +
Kaspersky....................18..... =
Microsoft...................*27.5.. =
McAfee ........................37.... +
Avira ............................43.... =

The "+" means improvement. The protection of other AVs did not change much (not measurable).

so I am tempted to put Norton 360, or what the name is their current version, on a VM to "feel" its performance, although I recall @Shaowra said light or low RAM...

 

[Templarware]

I've been using hardened Defender for quite some time, this week I installed Avast free back, and it's quite noticeable the less stress it puts on the system when launching the web browser and opening websites, it's faster and the fans don't rump up as much. Even with Hardened Mode On.

 

[Andy Ful]

Does Population Size matter?

When calculating the exact value of the sample size "s" we need to know the Population Size "N". But, it is worth knowing that in many cases the sample size does not significantly differ from its value "s0" calculated for unlimited Population Size. The same is true for the Margin of Error "e" which is usually almost the same as its value "e0" calculated for unlimited Population Size.
We have:
If s/N = d << 1 Then:
e ~ e0*(1 - d/2)
s ~ s0*(1-d)

A typical situation in any R-W test is that s >= 100 and d < 1/100.
To show this, I took the data from the SonicWall report:

If we use the data from the year 2021, then we can calculate over 1200 samples per 1 day. In a typical R-W test, approximately 6 samples per 1 day are used. In such a case we have:
d ~ 6/1200 = 0.005
We can use the unlimited Population Size (N ----> infinity) and the difference in results will be:
Sample Size (with a relative error of 0.5%)
Margin of Error (with a relative error of 0.25%)

In reality, these errors should be even smaller, because in tests we can have also some samples that are not Never-Before-Seen.

Post updated/corrected.