McAfee 2022 antivirus review
Our Verdict
McAfee's 2021 antivirus lineup provides decent malware protection, but some other brands practise it better.
For
- Unlimited VPN service, identity-theft protection
- New protection against tech-support scams
- Tight, clean interface
Confronting
- Heavy organization impact during scans
- No webcam protection or hardened browser
- Some features don't work if yous turn off auto-renewal
Tom's Guide Verdict
McAfee's 2021 antivirus lineup provides decent malware protection, simply some other brands do it meliorate.
Pros
- +
Unlimited VPN service, identity-theft protection
- +
New protection against tech-support scams
- +
Tight, clean interface
Cons
- -
Heavy system affect during scans
- -
No webcam protection or hardened browser
- -
Some features don't work if you turn off auto-renewal
McAfee 2021: Specs
Malware protection: Good
Organization impact, background: Low-cal
Organization impact, scans: Heavy
Windows compatibility: 7 through 10
Anti-theft: No
Fill-in software: No
File encryption: Yes
File shredder: Yes
Firewall: Aye
Game way: No
Hardened/secure browser: No
Parental controls: Yep
Countersign manager: Yes
Performance scanner: Yes
Ransomware rollback: Aye
System optimizer: Yes
Webcam protection: No
Virtual keyboard: No
VPN: Aye
Wi-Fi scanner: Yes
Support options: 24/7 phone, conversation
With an emphasis on protecting multiple machines on multiple platforms, McAfee'south antivirus programs do much more than the minimum.
They offering good, if not perfect, malware detection, and recently added features such equally unlimited virtual private network (VPN) service and identity-theft protection complement the newly streamlined interface.
On the other mitt, McAfee uses a lot of system resources during scans and lacks some security features institute with other brands, including defended webcam protection and a hardened browser for online shopping and banking.
Bitdefender, Kaspersky and Norton'due south programs are amid the best antivirus suites that offering more features with improve malware protection and lighter scans.
Ane more thing: McAfee's VPN and identity-theft protection, plus its money-back guarantee, are bachelor only if you permit your McAfee subscription automatically renew. In other words, y'all won't become everything you pay for unless yous commit alee of time to paying for it over again.
Read on for the rest of our McAfee review.
McAfee 2021: Costs and what's covered
McAfee has no free antivirus program, simply you can endeavour out McAfee Full Protection for 30 days for free.
The product range starts with McAfee AntiVirus, which covers a single Windows PC for $forty per year. It's got dedicated ransomware protection, a file shredder, a arrangement optimizer and a ii-style firewall, plus browser extensions for Chrome, Border and Firefox that warn of unsafe websites, tech-support scams and risky social-media links.
McAfee AntiVirus Plus has the same features merely covers upward to x devices (in our experience, an unlimited number) for $60 per year and includes Mac, iOS and Android software — a bargain for any person or family with many devices. (We have split reviews of McAfee's Mac and Android programs.)
McAfee Internet Security adds the True Key password manager (also reviewed separately) and an email spam filter. The program costs $lx per year for one device, $80 per twelvemonth for three and $90 per yr to protect 10 systems.
McAfee'southward flagship Total Protection and LiveSafe programs are like, merely while Total Protection is sold at retail, LiveSafe often comes with new PCs equally a trial subscription.
Both include Safe Family parental controls, identity-theft protection (for U.S. customers only) and unlimited access to McAfee'south virtual private network (VPN), only you lot've got to keep the McAfee subscription auto-renewal activated for the last two features. Neither the VPN nor the parental controls work with McAfee'southward Mac software.
While LiveSafe covers an unlimited number of devices for $120 per year, Total Protection has four different packages.
The $80 yearly Single Device subscription protects one PC but lacks file encryption or identity-theft protection. To get those, you'll need the $100 Individual/Couples packet that covers five computers. For $120 per twelvemonth, the Family plan covers 10 systems and adds Condom Family parental controls; its VPN use is limited to five users.
At the height of the pyramid is McAfee's $160 Full Protection Ultimate subscription, which adds Identity Theft Protection Plus, which includes credit-bureau monitoring and up to $1,000,000 for identity restoration.
Considering that the best identity-theft protection services costs hundreds per year, this isn't a bad deal. Total Protection Ultimate covers ten devices just as well restricts VPN admission to five users.
A stand-lone plan, McAfee Gamer Security, costs $60 a yr for a single Windows PC and balances online security with all-out operation. Information technology uses McAfee's deject resources to avoid placing an undue burden on your CPU. Once once again, you get the VPN, identity protection and coin-back guarantee if yous go out the auto-renewal selection on.
Similar nigh antivirus software, McAfee products are oftentimes available at substantial discounts. Some programs may be easier to detect at third-party retailers than on the McAfee website.
McAfee software works with Windows 7 (with Service Pack ane) through Windows ten. (McAfee Gamer Security requires Windows x version 1809 or later.) Software for other platforms supports macOS x.12 through 10.fifteen and Android 4.1 Jelly Edible bean or later. McAfee Mobile Security for iPhones and iPads supports iOS x or later on, but it isn't an antivirus app.
McAfee 2021: Antivirus protection
All five McAfee antivirus products browse for known malware and use deject computing and machine learning to spot brand-new malware and other dangerous items. Updates for the McAfee malware scanner go out several times daily to the company's 500 1000000 consumer and business concern users.
To proceed McAfee's database current, the malware scanner on your car volition transport new potential threats to McAfee servers. The scanner collects data just on threats you encounter and ignores your browsing history, passwords and other personal information, according to McAfee. Some antivirus brands let you opt out of this, but not McAfee.
McAfee's Ransom Baby-sit looks for suspicious file changes and speedily makes copies of targeted files if it suspects a ransomware attack. Advanced Malware Detection can speed the detection and distribution of a defense force to the company's subscribers.
McAfee 2021: Antivirus performance
McAfee's malware-detection rates are more often than not a half-step behind those of rival brands Bitdefender, Kaspersky and Norton, although they accept been improving recently.
In tests conducted past the independent German language lab AV-Test in May and June 2020, McAfee's scanner found all known, or "widespread," malware samples thrown at it but detected only 98.8% of the new "zero-day" samples in May. It scored 100% on the June nix-days.
Just in the next three bimonthly rounds of tests from July through Dec 2020, McAfee sailed through with 100% in both categories each time, matching the best. Some other brands that had less-than-perfect results have been getting better every bit well.
Bitdefender, Kaspersky, Norton, Trend Micro and even Microsoft's Windows Defender had perfect 100% malware-detection scores in all eight months of tests.
| Malware detection rates | AV-Test zero-mean solar day | AV-Test widespread | AV-Comparatives | SE Labs |
| Bitdefender | 100% | 100% | 99.6% | due north/a |
| ESET | 100% | 100% | 99.3% | n/a |
| Kaspersky | 100% | 100% | 99.vii% | 100% |
| McAfee | 100% | 100% | 98.5% | 100% |
| Microsoft | 100% | 100% | 99.5% | 97% |
| Norton | 100% | 100% | 99.five% | 100% |
| Sophos | 100% | 100% | 98.3% | 86% |
| Trend Micro | 100% | 100% | 100% | 92% |
McAfee was a flake short of perfection in Austrian lab AV-Comparatives' nigh recent tests. It detected an boilerplate of 98.v% of online malware in monthly tests from July through Oct 2020. Amid the half-dozen other paid antivirus brands were normally review, just Sophos did worse, and that was on the enterprise rather than the consumer tests.
Bitdefender, ESET, Kaspersky, Norton and fifty-fifty Microsoft each scored more than 99%. Trend Micro scored 100% but racked upward 63 fake positives, indicating that its detection engine might exist a trivial too sensitive.
McAfee got perfect scores in the well-nigh recent (October-December 2020) examination results from U.K.-based SE Labs, matching only Kaspersky. But whereas the latter had perfect scores all year, McAfee fell brusque in SE Labs' previous 2020 rounds, letting five pieces of malware infect exam systems.
Of the other brands in SE Labs' most recent tests that nosotros review, Norton detected everything just was docked points for faux positives and neutralizing rather than blocking 1 slice of malware. Trend Micro permit through ii pieces of malware, and Sophos a whopping eight.
Bitdefender and ESET were not tested. Microsoft, which we review alongside costless antivirus software, let one piece of malware infect a system.
McAfee 2021: Security and privacy features
Each of McAfee'southward products do the protection nuts well but lack features many competitors accept. The Identity tab in the McAfee software interface consolidates the program'southward privacy features, including the file shredder, password director and Tracker Remover, plus a information shredder with 3 levels of erasure for getting rid of inconvenient or embarrassing files.
Vulnerability Direction looks for one-time firmware, weak passwords and other potential flaws in your apps and organization software. There's also anti-phishing protection and a two-manner firewall that replaces the Microsoft one.
McAfee's Dwelling house Network Management shows yous devices that are connected to your Wi-Fi, identified by IP accost. It also can block outsiders trying to couch into your home LAN. McAfee'south App Boost makes programs run faster by reprioritizing system resources, while the Web Boost browser extension for Edge, Chrome and Firefox blocks unrequested downloads.
McAfee Internet Security adds an email filter to cease spam and phishing attempts, while LiveSafe and Total Protection (for 5 or more devices) add file encryption.
McAfee'southward Truthful Key password manager comes with Cyberspace Security and all Full Protection and LiveSafe packages. The Safe Connect VPN comes with LiveSafe and the 5-device (or more) versions of Total Protection.
The VPN customer software works across all platforms and uses the infrastructure of TunnelBear, a Toronto-based stand-alone VPN service that McAfee owns. It'due south a good bargain considering that a TunnelBear subscription costs $threescore a twelvemonth on its ain.
You can connect to servers in two dozen countries. Information technology took 5 seconds for me to connect to a local server in the New York expanse, although my data speed dropped from 188Mbps to 90Mbps.
Prophylactic Family parental controls come up with LiveSafe and the 10-user version of Total Protection. It filters websites based on a child's age and a personal profile, and also limits screen time, locates children'southward phones and schedules app blocking. On its own, Safe Family costs $50 a year.
McAfee's Identity Theft Protection Essentials (ITPE) monitors the dark Web for your personal information. It comes with LiveSafe and the 5- and x-device Total Protection packs; the height Ultimate Total Protection plan includes Identity Theft Protection Plus, which will reimburse you up to $i,000,000 for the costs of restoring your identity.
McAfee 2021: Performance and organization impact
To mensurate McAfee Total Protection's bear upon on arrangement operation, nosotros used our custom benchmark exam, which clocks how long information technology takes to match 20,000 names and addresses on a spreadsheet. Our testbed was a Lenovo ThinkPad T470 with a 2.5-GHz Cadre i5 processor, 8GB of RAM and 250GB of solid-country storage containing 63GB of files.
Prior to McAfee'due south installation, our test took an average of 10.1 seconds to finish, which we used every bit our baseline. Later we loaded McAfee Total Protection, that completion fourth dimension rose to 11.0 seconds, an acceptable background operation pass up of 8.ix%. Bitdefender Full Security had twice the background impact.
However, the benchmark completion time rose to nineteen.eight seconds during a McAfee full scan and 14.0 seconds during a quick scan. The former is among the biggest operation penalties we've seen caused by antivirus software, representing a decline of 96% from the baseline and 80% from the post-installation score.
| System hit | Post-installation | Full scan | Quick scan |
| Bitdefender | 19% | 33% | 31% |
| ESET | two% | 12% | northward/a |
| Kaspersky | 12% | 26% | 22% |
| McAfee | 9% | 96% | 37% |
| Norton | five% | 51% | 22% |
| Sophos | 6% | 47% | n/a |
| Tendency Micro | four% | 57% | 35% |
To put it another way, the CPU performed about half as fast during a McAfee full scan as before McAfee was installed. By comparing, Bitdefender's full scan slowed the system by almost a third, and Kaspersky's by but nearly a quarter.
McAfee's quick browse was notwithstanding heavy, only not abnormally then, with performance hits of 39% from the baseline and 27% from the background impact.
Fortunately, McAfee's scans are over quickly. Afterwards the initial full scan, during which McAfee Total Protection took an hour to index the entire drive'south 366,872 files, subsequent total scans took an average of four minutes and 5 seconds, nearly midway between Kaspersky and Bitdefender.
McAfee's quick scan took 1:33 to look at 7,247 files and stayed at roughly that duration regardless of how many times we ran it.
McAfee 2021: Interface
McAfee'southward latest interface is more than efficient than previous versions, consolidating defenses for PC (Antivirus, Firewall, Secure Apps and App Boost), Web (Browser Security, Web Heave, Tracker Remover and Secure VPN) and Identity (Password Director, File Shredder and File Lock encryption).
At that place's no overall appraisal of your security status, as you might see with other antivirus brands, merely each major department has useful information. The Settings section has so many options that only 1-third of them at a time fit on an HD screen.
McAfee'southward taskbar icon can update the software, utilise the VPN, alter settings for real-time scanning and the firewall and even connect you to the visitor'due south online support website.
McAfee 2021: Installation and support
Installing McAfee Total Protection starts with a trip to the company website or to a third-party retailer. You've got to enter credit-card information or an activation code, then create a McAfee business relationship.
McAfee'southward auto-renewal policy sets you up to pay for another subscription when the current one expires. Information technology'south piece of cake to change this after the software is installed but leaving it on is required to use McAfee's VPN and identity-theft protection features.
The beachhead installer is only 41.2MB, but it downloads the remainder of the files needed for the installation procedure. When the circular progress gauge is finished, the program puts you on the dashboard page, set up to run a browse.
McAfee's tech support crew works with Twitter and Facebook but won't reply to emails. They do offer 24/7 conversation and telephone access 24/seven, and there'due south a deep FAQ library. McAfee guarantees your money back if its software can't clean up your arrangement — merely, once more, only if you don't turn off the subscription motorcar-renewal.
McAfee 2021 review: Bottom line
From its basic Antivirus through Internet Security to Total Protection and LiveSafe, McAfee's software and services hit most of the hot buttons for the security-conscious, often at a bargain rate considering how many devices can be covered past a single license.
The just major chinks in McAfee'southward online armor are the lack of a dedicated defense confronting webcam hijacking or a hardened browser for online commerce, plus the fact that some other brands detect more malware. It's likewise a fleck stinky that the VPN and identity-theft protection won't work if y'all plough off subscription machine-renewals.
Overall, McAfee's protections are skilful, merely programs from Bitdefender, Kaspersky and Norton provide more complete coverage and better malware detection.
Updated with new lab-test results. This review was originally published Jan. 22, 2021.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/mcafee
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