Definitive Best FREE Antivirus 2019

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

This is the 2019 poll for best free antivirus (aka antimalware) security. 

 

The poll for paid products is located here. 

 

The poll for 2018's best free antivirus is located here.

 

If your choice is not listed, please choose "other" and reply below with its name.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

[bikeman25]

Avast Free 19.1.2360

(used on Laptop, Main Desktop and Secondary Family Desktop)

 

Running Well

 

[+mram Subscriber²]

For Windows 10, I struggle to find something better than Defender.   And just to reiterate what has been said from previous years, if Defender is ranked low because of zero-day exploits, it's not the result of the product -- it's simple DAT updates, which you can schedule easily to run as often as you wish.

[Ve7878]

Windows Defender. Seems to have come a long way recently.

[Fleet Command]

Some thoughts on the free AV products:

• Avast and AVG: I no longer go for them after what they did to CCleaner and TuneUp Utilities. It is not an issue of trust or distrust; it is just they now have a bad record I cannot ignore.
• Avira: Forces me to enable Windows Firewall, even when I have a third-party personal firewall. No, thanks.
• Check Point ZoneAlarm: It has stayed in the past.
• Baidu, Qihu, Tencent: Have set bad precedents in the past.
• Lavasoft Ad-aware: I didn't know it's an antivirus.
• Comodo: I actually use its Firewall alongside Windows Defender.

[SnoopZ]

I don't recommend Avast anymore and have moved away to the 3-6 month trials you can easily get of Bitdefender Total Security 2019.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

Yeah I agree with @SnoopZ. I used to love Avast but they've REALLY gone down hill in recent years and their suite causes more issues than it solves anymore ...  

 

I mostly just use the built in Windows Defender anymore; no real need for anything more personally

[bikeman25]

Used Avast Free non stop since 2006, Hard for me to switch fully to Windows Defender, as I keep wanting to some reason to go back to using it.    Plus not sure on switching Mom's PC that does Online banking, and shopping on, after Avast been on that one since purchased the system in 2012. 

 

Though am trying Defender again on Gaming Desktop and Gaming Laptop,  lets see how long I can stick to using Defender and not switch back to Avast,  then might go ahead and switch over the 3rd system finally

 

 

[monkeylove]

Kaspersky for now.