AVG Free Antivirus
A perfectly respectable free antivirus product, but there’s no reason to choose this over Avast
SCORE ✪✪✪✪✪ PRICE Free from avg.com
AVG is now owned by Avast, and although the parent company hasn’t officially confirmed it, we suspect that the two packages are built on the same antivirus engine. That’s fine by us, though, because it’s a highly effective engine. Just like Avast, AVG put in a strong performance in AV-Comparatives’ tests, blocking 99% of malware with just three false positives.
It also proved quite nimble when it comes to performance. It scored a “fast” rating for browsing the web, and for the first runs of the file-copy and application-launching tests. On subsequent repetitions of those tests, it stepped up to “very fast”.
But if AVG is internally the same as Avast, the look and feel is different, with a simpler and more clearly laid out homescreen. The software still makes a point of showing you what you’re not getting, but features are divided into two boxes – separating free features from unavailable premium ones – rather than being all jumbled in together as with Avast.
The feature set itself is different, too. AVG Free is a more minimal setup than Avast: it’ll warn you if a website tries to drop malicious content onto your PC, but there’s no equivalent to Avast’s browser extension, nor any standalone secure browser. The friendly tool for creating recovery media is gone, too.
In place of those features, you do get a secure file shredder and a simple management console, which lets you check the status of all your systems running AVG security software – whether they’re running Windows, Android or macOS – and trigger scans and other relevant actions.
Our major gripe with AVG is the same one we had with Avast. Large pop-ups appear from time to time in the bottom corner of your screen, inviting you to invest in the premium antivirus package – or one of AVG’s other products. These aren’t just intrusive, but deceptive: one warned us that our system was being slowed down by incorrect settings, and included a “Fix problems” button. But clicking on it opened an advert. You can ignore these notifications, but you can’t get rid of them: that’s only for paying customers.
The precis is that AVG is coming to increasingly resemble its stepbrother. It has the same good points as Avast – respectable protection, fast performance and an unbeatable price – but also shares our least favourite feature, namely those unstoppable pop-ups. The difference is that Avast sweetens the deal with its web extensions and recovery media kit; that makes AVG, with its more limited feature set, the less attractive option.