AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition review

One of the most popular packages around, more than 25% of PC Pro readers rely on AVG to protect them from malware. An obvious part of its appeal is the price: it's free for non-commercial home use, including regular virus signature updates in perpetuity.

But AVG's success isn't merely down to affordability. Installation was fast and simple, with the default settings providing protection in an unobtrusive fashion. It's efficient, too: XP's memory usage while AVG was running was little over 600MB, compared to the 800MB load of some other packages. When a virus was found, CPU usage flicked up to over 90%, but only for a fraction of a second. Incoming emails were scanned so quickly we were moved to double-check that AVG was really inspecting them.

There's something slightly superficial about this breezy user experience, as we noted in our review of AVG's complete security suite in February (web ID: 100190). The program's configuration interface is incoherently spread out across too many confusing windows. That's not a show-stopper, though, as most users won't ever need to access this interface thanks to intelligently chosen default settings.

The real problem is the program's 83% overall detection rate. This isn't a score to be ashamed of - AVG can be proud of having outshone seven commercial products. Nevertheless, it falls well short of the top spot, with four other packages doing a better job of malware detection, including Avira AntiVir, which is also free. AVG is unarguably one of the most likeable products around, but in our tests it simply wasn't among the most effective.

Author: Arien Graham-Smith