Eset Internet Security
Mid-range, mid-price security software with no extraneous matter or steep second-year price rises
PRICE (5 devices) First year, £42 (£50 inc VAT), renewal £50 (£60 inc VAT)
from eset.com
Eset is perhaps better known as a provider of enterprise-oriented endpoint protection, which is why its home security suite feels like it means business.
This extends to its excellent levels of protection. Eset’s historical performance in AV-Test’s suite of tests has been excellent (although it hasn’t been tested recently) and AV Comparatives’ latest results – a 98.9% rate of malware blocking with a single false positive – is respectable, albeit not in the top flight of results.
There are three versions of Eset for consumers. The cheapest, NOD32, is simple antivirus for your Windows or macOS computer. Eset Internet Security, which we’ve reviewed here, adds Android device protection, a dedicated firewall, anti-spam, botnet protection, defence against threats on your local network, anti-theft tracking tools for portable devices, webcam protection and parental controls.
The next tier up, Eset Smart Security Premium, adds a password manager, a removable media encryption tool and Eset LiveGuard. This latter product sends data about potentially risky unknown files to Eset’s own servers for analysis within five minutes.
The interface is available in dark and light modes, and can be configured to follow system colour modes. The main overview screen informs you that you’re protected and provides shortcuts to various services. A network inspector will scan your network for devices and any potential threats; the secured browser mode for banking protection can warn you about any untoward apps that might be spying on you; and an anti-theft toolkit will check your security settings and provide a honeypot “phantom account” that will take over as the main account while your others are concealed if you mark your computer stolen.
In the Computer scan tab, the usual array of on-demand and scheduled scans is available. Almost everything else is enabled by default, with the exception of parental controls, which allow you to restrict activity by time, app, and web content type or URL.
There are some novel features here, but aside from its anti-theft tools Eset doesn’t do anything that surpasses its rivals. The fact that it did fractionally worse than Microsoft Defender in AV Comparatives’ latest tests seals its mid-table fate.