ah windows defender now known as windows security and you know with such a competitive free and premium antivirus market well maybe we should answer is windows defender good enough for windows 11.
introduction
hey welcome or welcome back it’s good to see you now in today’s video i’m going to be going through some malware testing while also putting windows defender against some other.
supposedly best free antivirus competitors can a built-in free antivirus for windows 11 tool be enough to protect your pc from the ever growing risks out there well let’s see let’s set the scene windows defender comes preinstalled on windows 10 and 11operating systems.
but it doesn’t mean it’s your only option a lot of users think it’s decent because well it’s free but it doesn’t have all the capabilities that you might need from an anti-virus so that’s why i’m going to compare them to the total av and bitdefender free plans total av is a bit of a newcomer developed in just 2016.
Antivirus market
so it isn’t as well known in the antivirus market and this is a surprise because their detection rate is excellent and of course bitdefender you know the same year that nasa launched their mars probe odyssey this little guy was founded this provider is beloved by experienced users and obviously with experience comes results.
which we’ll cover shortly. Okay now getting to the cornerstone of any good password manager is security now when stuff is free well you should always expect some limitations so do any of these free antivirus options have enough capabilities to match your daily activities.
while safeguarding without draining your computer’s resources all right all antivirus providers should have solid reputations so when it comes to general activities you know the basics they’re all there like device scanning a huge consideration for methough is real-time protection.
Ransomware protection
which all providers have for free excluding total vs free plan real-time protection is absolutely vital making sure that your antivirus doesn’t just remove threats that are already on your system but protects day in and day out oh and on the topic of additional protection total av is lacking another important part of this puzzle additional ransomware protection and did you know that globally.
The total ransomware attacks in the first four months of this year matched half of last year’s total. That is madness and it’s why good protection is more important than ever. Windows defender and bitdefender free both have a stripped back version of snow in terms of security.
i’m gonna say that windows defender does have a bitmore to offer here with a firewall isolated browser and even parental controls and while there isn’t much difference between the windows 10 and 11versions.
Microsoft Security
The latter has additional features that let you see the protection history oh and also to use some features you have to sign into a microsoft account seriously super annoying and for you more privacy focused users yeah that might be a little bit of a turn off and though way heavy detection rates are also crucial.
So I have a few interesting insights in that regard. Okay, as always planted 10 malicious files onto my windows operating system and tested each provider’s detection rate duration and effect on my pc’s performance a little quick side note.
I always do thorough testing just like this and with antivirus providers often changing their architecture and functionalities well yeah you might want to subscribe to get all those important updates now starting with the windows defender test on windows 10.
I will say here is where you get the best firewall blocking all the malware i tried to download so i actually had to disable it for the test having said that when using windows 11 i found this feature completely useless i was able to download zero day threats despite this being enabled and alarmingly.
Best free antivirus 2022
When I did a full scan not a single piece of planted malware was detected with windows 10 or 11versionsyeah hardly the best free antivirus 2022 option wouldn’t you agree yeah okay sothe detection rate was shocking but hey the full scan was quite speedy around six minutes so silver linings.
i guess okay but is there another free antivirus that can actually detect some threats well cue total av here we go the same test 10 planted malicious files and surprisingly total av for windows 11found 10 threats all of them.
which is surprising because there’s no firewall or real-time protection compared to the other two this provider has the fastest quick scans under a minute and the fullscan was speedy too around five minutes good going guys but my average cpu loadhere wasn’t that terrible but it also wasn’t the best with an 82 average here’s.
where bitdefender for windows 11really surprised me not only did they use fewer system resources than both providers averaging 55 cpu usage but the full scan also took the same amount of time as window defender yet caught a lot more threats yep eight out of ten planted zero day malware threats were detected.
so on the surface windows defender look like they are fully prepared to take on any threat with their shiny little features however the results are speaking for themselves so having said that no single free provider was perfect but i believe total av and bitdefender have a good enough balance and are strong enough contenders for the best free antivirus for pc spot okay.
Online activities
So what kind of features will you really miss from a free option while the security capabilities i’ve covered are pretty much all you get if you really should consider your online activities in whole take into consideration that none of these providers have privacy focused features like vpns.
you know to anonymize your online traffic and also those password managers to store your passwords under a300 ton vault of encryption so if you’re after those features i have premium deals down in the description.
so be sure to check those out at the end of this video now there are also some really advanced features like dark web scanning which checks to see if your info has ended up on a dark web database data ends up on the dark web a lot more than you think so getting alerts for this worst case scenario can safeguard your data for surenow while all of these are arguably quality of life features they’re still worth considering especially.
if you use your device for work, studying or handling any precious info free stuff might not handle the way you want it to and we can’t call any provider the best free antivirus for windows 11 without covering ease of use a couple of insights for you.
here total av is really easy to install and set up it took me only about five minutes in total the uiis intuitive enough with a streamlined layout and clear categorization so i don’t see any issues in terms of ecu’s here bitdefender premium on the other hand is one of the longest setups.