A reputable anti-malware evaluation company, AV-TEST, earlier today published its most recent rankings for anti-virus software for residential users. For the first time, AV-TEST assessed these products’ functionality on a test bench running Windows 11. Furthermore, Microsoft Defender’s total performance was surprisingly far poorer than anticipated. In actuality, it was only able to hold onto the last spot because it was shared with another product. This is considerably different from how Defender typically performs on Windows 10 according to AV-evaluations. TEST’s
The results of AV-TEST appear to be consistent with the most recent test results from AV-Comparatives. In the latter example, Microsoft Defender was discovered to be the evaluated product that slowed down a user’s machine the most (according to a quantitative assessment). According to AV-Comparatives’ test, file copying, archiving, and app installations appear to be Defender’s Achilles’ heel because they have the greatest performance impact. This finding is consistent with what AV-TEST also discovered, and remarkably similar outcomes were also observed in AV-Comparatives’ own previous ranking.
The various anti-virus programmes were rated by AV-TEST using both a PCMark score and its own AV-C or AVC score. While the PC Mark score is out of 100, the AVC score receives the full mark of 90. The Impact Score, which represents the overall performance impact, is calculated by deducting the product’s overall score out of 190. Therefore, the better, the lower the Impact Score. Microsoft, which received the highest Impact Score, takes last with 27.7 points.
AV-Comparatives explains how the AVC score was created in case you’re curious:
When it comes to certifications, Microsoft obtained the Standard rating, which is the lowest level, as was to be expected. However, Total Defense also obtained the same certificate because it had a slight advantage over Defender in the Impact Score (table in the image above).
The complete test report from AV-Comparatives is available here.
