Avira Free Antivirus

As free antivirus tools go, sometimes it's very hard to make up your mind, considering the sheer number of available solutions on the market. Free antivirus protection is often much more limited than the paid one and you never get the same number of features. Still, certain free tools can satisfy the needs of casual users.

Avira Free Antivirus has been around for as long as anyone can remember. It supports Windows 7 and never versions. The features you receive straight away are a firewall manager and a couple of browser extensions. You can upgrade to Avira Antivirus Pro, Avira Internet Security Suite, or Avira Prime, ranked by their price and the number of new features.

The first layer of protection is real-time scanning. If malicious activity is registered, the threat is malware signed and sent to other 400 million Avira users. However, this process shares certain information about your computer and your browsing activity. The only way to opt out is by sending an email.

You can run your own manual scans or set up automated ones but it's noticeable how these scans have a large impact on your computer's resources. Avira's malware recognition testing is otherwise above average, but there are tools which outperform Avira in almost any category. Lab results from various sources indicate that Avira is at the top of the list by some criteria, whereas it performs averagely in other sections.

Its interface has been renewed and it doesn't feel as outdated as the previous versions. Its customization options are rich and the installation process feels lightweight with a 5MB installer, although there are additional files being downloaded throughout the installation process.