In its rankings for 2021, anti-virus assessment firm AV-Comparatives wasn"t super-impressed by Windows Defender, at least when compared to some of its rival products. However, AV-TEST had a somewhat different opinion as its report showed Microsoft Defender doing exceptionally well in the second half of the year reports, scoring full marks in both the October 2021 test and the December 2021 assessment.
But, despite the great showing, Microsoft and fans of the Defender antivirus solution may be somewhat disappointed as the consumer version of the product failed to win any of the awards that AV-TEST conferred to the products it felt were the best anti-virus solutions of 2021.
For Windows, three awards were given for three different categories:
- Best Protection
- Best Performance
- Best Usability
As stated above, Defender failed to secure any of the categories for its consumer product. In case you are wondering who the winners are, they are listed below under the categories they won in.
Best Protection
- Bitdefender
- Kaspersky
- Norton 360
Best Performance
- ESET
- G DATA
- Kaspersky
- Norton 360
- PC Matic
- Protected.net Total AV
Best Usability
- Avira
- ESET
Not all is bad for Microsoft though as Defender managed to snag a win in the Best Protection for Corporate users category. You can view the full report here.