Is Avast Subscription Worth It

[Griselda Humbarger]

Excellentall-around protection is provided by a range of powerful tools, even in the free version. Paid-for versions add additional security, but for general home users the free version will do everything it needs for all-round protection.

While it's still the newest offering from Avast, Avast One has been around long enough for users to get a good feel of the program, and third-party test labs to see how consistent it is in stopping malware. In both instances, Avast One has proven it deserves to be one of the best antivirus software.

Some reasons Avast One is worth considering include the number of advanced security tools most of its subscription offerings have. For example, every paid subscription comes with access to a secured VPN, and a helpful system cleanup tool.

There are options to have webcam monitoring and parental controls included, but all Avast One apps feature anti-phishing, ransomware protection, password monitoring, and a simple but effective firewall. You also can protect multiple devices, and Avast One works on all the major platforms, Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS.

You can take the free antivirus app, Avast One Essentials for a spin, though you will be quite limited in the tools you can use, and you can only protect a single Windows computer. But I'm sure once you see how well Avast works, and how easy the program is to use, you'll want to upgrade and take advantage of everything Avast has to offer.

Essential has other tools, but they have limits. For example, you can use the password manager to look for any passwords that have been compromised, but this must be run manually. You also have to manually check for software updates and start the process of downloading and installing them yourself.

The secure VPN is available for Essential users, but it's limited to only 5GB each week, with a single server location available. This is enough data for more than a day of continuous music streaming, or 10 hours of watching Netflix.

This mid-tier subscription doesn't add much more in the way of security tools, but the password manager and software updates are automatic, so you don't need to worry about them. Also, you have unlimited VPN use and can connect to any server in over 50 locations worldwide.

The only tool added to Avast One Premium is identity monitoring. This is actually a good feature to have because it keeps tabs on your personal information notifying you if it is used illegally or sold on the black web, and will help you recover your identity after a breach. Premium protects 30 devices for $119.88 per year.

Avast One's installer isn't as customizable so you don't get to pick and choose the tools you want to download. This makes the process rather simple. However, as with all Avast antivirus solutions, it will try and install the Avast Browser and make it your default. There is a place on the install where you can unclick this option, but you have to look for it because it is in pretty small print.

After it was installed, I tested Avast One's impact on system performance by running top benchmark PCMark Professional before and after installation. Previously Avast software slowed me down a little more than average, but this time I found no measurable difference at all. Absolutely nothing.

That's based on Avast One Essentials and without using any of Avast's speedup tools, either. There are too many variables to make any guarantees, but it's at least possible that installing and setting up Avast One could leave your system faster than it was before.

There was more good news in my self-protection tests, where I launched a number of attacks on Avast One to see if malware could disable it. These involve attempting to delete files, change Registry settings, stop or disable services, close processes, unload drivers, and more. None of them made the tiniest difference to the package, which continued to protect me as usual.

Looking to run a scan, connect to the VPN, or accelerate your system, for instance? No need to go browsing through various tabs, then try to remember wherever everything is. Just scroll down and there are shortcuts to scans, the VPN, and others, and you can run them all in a couple of clicks.

Clicking the Explore button displays a full list of Avast One's features, which does look a little more complicated. But it's easier to understand what's on offer when you can see everything in one place, rather than browsing around a number of tabs. And if you don't understand something - what is 'File Shield', exactly? - clicking the option gets you a simple explanation (the File Shield allows Avast to scan every file you access to make sure it's safe.)

Several options aren't available in the free Avast One Essentials (Webcam Protection, Web Hijack Guard, Driver Updater, and more.) Some free apps don't mark these, so you're forever clicking buttons and being told 'Can't have that until you upgrade, you freeloader.' Avast highlights options you can't use with a padlock, a smarter approach that makes One Essential much more comfortable to use.

Avast One's antivirus features begin with the Smart Scan. Launch this with a click and it runs a 10-15 second Quick Scan for malware, combined with checks for dubious browser add-ons and PC performance issues. (It doesn't look for missing software patches, unlike the previous Avast Antivirus, although you can still do this manually.)

The Smart Scan and Avast's real-time protection should spot most threats, but the package has plenty of other options. There's a Deep Scan (previously called a Full Scan) to check your entire system; a Targeted Scan which examines specific files or folders, and a Boot-Time Scan to check for threats before Windows fully starts. And, if that's not enough, you can create custom scan types to do whatever you like.

There are plenty of configuration options, too. You're able to define what to scan (all hard drives, the system drive only, removable drives, archives, and more), how to treat any threats, set scan priority to optimize performance, and more.

The engine supports running on-demand scans in parallel, a level of flexibility you won't always see elsewhere. If you're running a lengthy full system scan, for instance, you're able to run a separate targeted scan on a removable drive you've just connected, and maybe check some recent downloads, all at the same time.

This didn't always work smoothly. Although My normal on-demand scans ended with a reassuring 'we didn't find anything' message, the Scan History page warned that 'your Explorer Scan was unable to scan all files', and 'we suggest scanning again.'

I scanned the same test data a second time to find out whether an antivirus uses any optimizations. Avast's time dropped fractionally to 27 minutes, similar to Avira's second scan of 24:41. But some apps only scan files if they're new or change, and that makes a huge difference. Bitdefender's second scan of my test data took 27 seconds, and Kaspersky managed 170 seconds.

The latest March 2023 summary report places Avast in the top spot with an impressive 99.97% online detection rate. It dipped a little in offline detection and did wrongly tag two files as malicious when they weren't. But compared to the competition, Avast is clearly the program to beat.

AV-Test's Home Windows from February 2023 also places Avast in its top antivirus software group. This lab looked at 18 different antivirus software and rated them in three different areas. Avast was one of 14 that earned a perfect 6/6 for protection. However, it was only one of 6 that earned perfect scores in all three areas.

Results were mixed, with Avast quarantining the test app immediately for some actions while allowing others to continue and only detecting an issue when the file hit the hard drive. Bitdefender is more consistent, blocking all tests, but others have done much worse (Adaware missed all the suspicious behavior, although it did detect the files), and Avast was acceptable overall.

The second, more advanced test used a simple ransomware simulator I developed myself. As Avast hadn't seen this before, it wouldn't be able to detect it from a file signature alone, making this a useful test of behavior monitoring.

I launched the simulator and Avast One realized this was something new, and announced that it was being scanned for threats. A positive start? Maybe, but around 15 seconds later Avast told me the simulator was safe, then did nothing at all as it encrypted thousands of user files.

Some antivirus apps perform much better on this test. Bitdefender and Kaspersky not only killed the simulator within a fraction of a second, but they also recovered the handful of files it managed to encrypt (five to ten.)

Install Avast One and it automatically detects folders with user documents, then adds them to Avast's Ransomware Shield Protect list. Untrusted apps aren't allowed to modify the contents of anything in these folders without permission.

That's a problem, especially as there's no sign of any issue. Avast One doesn't tell you it's running this document search, and unless you happen to click the Ransomware Shield option, choose 'View protected folders' and browse the list, you might never realize Avast has missed something.

Shield fully activated; I ran my ransomware simulator again. This time Avast One raised an alert as soon as it accessed a file, I chose the Block option, and it wasn't able to touch anything on my system.

This isn't a substitute for correctly recognizing malware in the first place (my test ransomware wasn't able to encrypt any documents, but Avast didn't recognize it as a serious threat and allowed it to continue running.) Still, it's a useful extra layer of protection that could work with even the very latest threats. Just keep in mind that it's not a paid feature - you can get it for nothing in Avast One Essential.

This isn't an area where Avast has always excelled in the past, but the company looks to have upped its game. Just to make sure, I assembled a collection of box-fresh phishing URLs to run my own tests, comparing Avast One with Bitdefender. That delivered a positive result, with Avast detecting 67% of threats compared to Bitdefender's 41%.

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