McAfee+ Advanced
Expensive protection with lots of features, but merely decent malware protection
SCORE
DIRECT PRICE Individual, £63 (£75 inc VAT) from mcafee.com RETAIL PRICE Not available
McAfee is one of the most expensive security suites around, but it is trustworthy: ever since Intel spun it off into an independent company, its long-term performance in malware protection tests has significantly improved.
Unfortunately, McAfee’s recent performance leaves something to be desired. It achieved 100% protection in AV-Tests’s most recent tests, with just two false positives, but got an unexpectedly poor 96% rating from SE Labs, albeit with no false positives. It returned a decent but not worldbeating 99.6% in AV-Comparatives’ latest tests with six false positives.
All McAfee+ plans come with some degree of identity protection, but in Premium this is a scan-only feature to encourage you to upgrade. The Advanced and Ultimate tiers include tools to automatically tweak popular social media settings for privacy, a personal data cleanup service that will request your removal from data broker listings, and identity theft insurance.
The Secure VPN uses TunnelBear’s fantastic infrastructure, which is quick but not much use for streaming. And you can only use it via McAfee’s own clients, so forget about adding it to a router, server or Linux PC. You get real-time and scheduled scans, a software updater, cookie and tracker remover and an online security portal.
There’s a password manager, too, but this is as adequate as all built-in password managers tend to be.
McAfee has discontinued its dedicated firewall, and now provides a limited front end for the Windows Defender Firewall. Unfortunately, this means you now need to go to the Windows firewall if you need to create inbound rules. In fact, if you created any with the old McAfee firewall, you’ll have to re-create these following a software update to the new version.
We also need to talk about price. McAfee+ Premium costs £110 per year for individuals and £130 for a family subscription, which includes parental controls. Advanced costs £160 for an individual and £230 for families. And Ultimate costs an even heftier £170 for individuals and £350 for families. They can all be installed on an unlimited number of Windows, macOS,
Android, iOS or ChromeOS devices.
Naturally, McAfee doesn’t shout about these prices on its website, instead luring people with first-year discounts for new subscribers. That’s £170 for Ultimate, £75 for Advanced and £50 for Premium, but make sure the renewal fees don’t surprise you. We couldn’t find retail bundles of the McAfee+ range in the UK, but head to store.pcpro.co.uk and £20 buys the ten-device version of McAfee Total Protection. This gets you the antivirus and VPN component – but lacks bells and whistles such as the identity protection – and is a much better deal.