I’ve spent many hours, practically the whole day testing and writing my review on Avira few days ago. When I tried to save the article in WordPress draft, the page went blank (so coincidentally there was a downtime on this site) and I wasn’t able to retrieve what I wrote by clicking the back button. So the whole review was gone and I had to rewrite. It might be a little simple but the main points are all there.
I’ve been recommending Kaspersky to nearly everyone that I know if they are willing to fork out money to purchase an antivirus license. It’s pretty obvious that I am a big fan of Kaspersky because there are so many articles and tips on Kaspersky. However for some people that couldn’t afford to spend money on antivirus, I’d definitely recommend them to go for Avira AntiVir because based on so many antivirus test results, Avira mostly grab one of the top spots in detecting malwares. Trojan and cryptor programmers always face a headache to find a method to bypass Avira detection because every time they find a method bypass it, after a while Avira learns to detect it. So for the first time, here is my unbiased review on Avira AntiVir to share with you all on what I think about Avira.
I used Avira AntiVir Premium v9 for testing because I was able to easily get a genuine license valid for 3 months from this promotional page.
The difference between the Premium and Free version is the Premium version has extra features such as WebGuard, AntiDrive-By, RescueSystem, Enhanced email protection, and fast premium update servers but I think I can live without those extra features since there are replacements for them.
WebGuard = WoT
AntiDrive-By = Files are scanned anyway by the real time AnVir Guard when finished downloading
RescueSystem = Can be downloaded manually from Avira’s website
Enhanced Email Protection = Don’t need it if you are not using a POP3 email client
Fast Premium Update Servers = The personal update servers are also as fast as the premium servers
The Avira Premium installer (33MB) is considered small if compared to Kaspersky (50+MB), Norton (70+MB) and BitDefender(50+MB). After finished installing, the first thing I did was to update the program. Updating the virus definition and program the first time took merely 1 minute and 11 seconds because the update size was 8MB and I was downloading at 110+KBps.
Next I tested the scanning speed. A complete system scan took 5 minutes and 45 seconds to finish scanning 64398 files, 9744 directories and 195 archives.
When the scan has been completed, I ran a complete scan again for the second time and Avira also scans nearly the same amount of files and directories. A clean Windows 7 already takes 5 minutes to scan, I am sure that the scanning time will be increased by a lot if I scan my 1.5TB backup hard drive. Unlike Norton where it maintains a list of files that can be trusted which greatly reduce the scanning time.
During scanning, an avscan.exe process will launch and its memory usage kept increasing from 55mb to 67MB. However, the memory usage for avguard.exe drops to 16MB and finally goes down to only 1MB when the full system scan finishes. CPU usage is averagely around 30% but never goes above 50%.
As for the memory usage, only the real-time guard process (avguard.exe) and on-demand scanner process (avscan.exe) seems to be taking up quite a lot of memory. Avira is able to bring down the avguard.exe’s memory usage to 700K but of course when you start to use any programs again, the memory of the avguard.exe increases. As for avscan.exe, this process only runs when you start scanning any files and the memory usage surely goes more than 50MB.
I planted a total of 23 malwares on the computer, 22 of them are virus and 1 is a private version of trojan which is undetectable by most antivirus. Avira manage to detect all 23 malware as threats.
Avira is really good in terms of detection and the load that it puts on the computer is acceptable. To me, Kaspersky still takes the first place for “paid” antivirus and Avira takes the first place for “free” antivirus.
[ Avira AntiVir Premium | Avira AntiVir Personal ]
Related posts:
but Avira free has no email protection..that is a huge hole.
Nice review. Thanks. I already download the antivirus from filerex.com/get/windows/antivirus/avira_antivir_personal.html
how much memory did we need to install this kind of anti virus?
You didn’t do a review on the free product. You did a review on the Paid Version of Avira. They are basically different from each other. The paid version of Avira has more features compared to the free version.
I’m a big fan of Avira AntiVir. I had the premium edition and ditched it after the promo licence ended.
Now I’m running the free edition and saw no difference in the protection point of view.
I actually recommend the free edition to whomever ask me about a great antivirus, and installed this edition on many computers and it detected/removed many viruses.
Nagging screen can be disabled easily when you follow some steps. Just google for that.
It monitors in the background, updates frequently and finds most threats. It may not be perfect, but only a weenee would suggest that antivirus software has no value.
Avira is a great AV software, not to mention it’s issues with updating. Some how this is the solution which worked for me and posted it in your forum…
raymond.cc/forum/general-forum/12554-unable-to-update-avira.html#post111850
hi im nassir ahmad i knew that avira is good but let me know that there are some people dont know the updating of antiviruse do a action that every body can.
I was so happy when I read about your review. I said to myself: finally a good free antivirus! But alas, no good :( I waited almost 1 hour for an update start and when nothing happened, I decided to uninstall and return to my previous antivirus. It really is a shame, because I ran a scan on a known set of viruses and had a pretty good hitrate.
Keep up the good work :)
I also certify that Avira Free has update problems the last 3-4 weeks.
This appeared to many computers (about 5 PCs), so its not a specific PC problem. I had to recommend to my clients to uninstall it and install AVG which is not so light on resources but updates are fine constantly.
I have both Kapersky and Avira premium secutity suite.Kapersky is very good,but it really slows down files loading.Even with the heuristics down or even off there still is a big pause b4 anything loads.Same with e-mail.
Avira on the other hand is much quicker.Hardly any delay in loading files,and seems to detect well.I get hardly any false positives.
The best one i think is the one i’ve yet to afford to but,smart security.U hardly notice it’s there.
U say kapersky expensive,but cost me £17 at Amazon,Avira cost £26.Eset £40 though,would have got ages ago if it was cheaper.Must be losing a lot of customers because of price.
did you have the free genuine key for avira premium
Hello Raymond and All…
I Like Avira and use it for a very long time.
But, I whant to know if anyone here know something about the Rising Antivirus.
I read in some place over the internet that this is better than avira and kis
Prevx is the best….but its not free!! :’(
To dick white:
I do not know what Avira product you are using but Avira AV Free version automatically updates on a CONTINUAL basis.
(You can also Manually update the system if there is a problem with the automatic ones in your computer.)
I like avira as it is lightweight , quick scanning and high detection rates but avira has no rootkit detection under 64 bit windows due to patchguard feature of windows 64 bit. But KIS and NIS have it and this is the only reason for me to use KIS instead of avira
Hi, i have been using Avira Free AV Sytem for a couple of years. It has been excellent but for a couple of months there is a great degradation in its detection capabilities. I am dealing with repair and maintainence of computers in labs and avira has left me in the middle of no where. It is a useless piece of crap when dealing with latest malware spreading through usb flash drives. I have been submitting the samples to avira but now i am also tired as the same samples of malware are available in the virus definitions of many AV programs like NOD32 and kaspersky. Even lower rated AVG and avast are detecting more viruses that avira now. I have been a big fan of Avira but, sory man, it has disappointed me a loooooooooooooot in these couple of months or so. Right now, i am testing many different AV programs like kasper and NOD32. In free programs, i think AVAst is much better than AVIRA at this time and in my view, Kasper or Avira with Trojan Remover and any other good firewall (Zonealarm or Online Armor) is the lethal ocmbination against any malware.
I am an average user of pc & internet, not surfing much but by bittorrent i have been downloding rip movies generally.
I dont know much about security subjects for pc and web surfing also.
My simple ideas about security are,
The best firewall is no firewall (3rd party) at all. I couldnt find (configure) a firewall software that will not make diffucult using a pc (i am an average user) so i leave my pc to bill gates firewall.
The best antivirus is no money antiviruses like Avira & Avast. I like both of them because their free products are better than most of the paid antivirus softwares in the world.
I say an extra thanks to Avast because they never blacklist illegal keys for their pro version so you can use their pro in your home pc for the ones who couldnt pay for an antivirus software.
Kaspersky & Norton are money makers, dont give your money to these companies, give to poor children instead.
All spyware softwares are crap, I am usin spyware terminator for its hips module, it havent found an all the years i am using.
Use Firefox, Opera & Google Chrome with adblocking.
I sometimes find infected keygens & patches that i downloaded pirated softwares from net and that’s all I am facing the internet threats (i am not using banking stuff from net).
dont waste your money to these big companies, they all want you to afraid of these to buy their products.
give your money (50 $) to poor children instead of buying their useless softwares.
No Nicks, I do not get a single cent nor anything from Avira for writing this. If you’ve been here long enough, you should know that I write articles based on what I personally think and I am bias.
If it’s good, I’ll say that it’s good. If not, I have no problem saying that it sucks.
i agree with the review, previously i use avg 8.5 on my desktop and upon reading this review i try avira 9. upon scaning the avira detects 2 files infected with w32/Sality.Y
i also use avast home edition on my notebook and for me avast is fine.
Ray i learn a lot from this site and more on yours findings.and hoping fore more to come.
thanks!
Avira is indeed the best free antivirus. I used it for a long time, but for now I gave KIS 2010 a shot and I don’t regret it. Exactly like you said in the end, Kaspersky is the best paid antivirus and Avira is the best free antivirus.
avira is best among free versions available
but it lacks web guard which is very essential …so u got to go with paid antivirus..cant rely on free if u use internet
G Data beats Avira
For me norton IS 2010 is the best paid version than KIS
Have you tried Microsoft Security Essentials to compare? OneCare was ridiculed by competitors and reviewers, but Essentials seems to have been received well. An independent anti-virus company (AV-Test) claimed that Essentials did very well in their tests.
I’m running Essentials on one of my laptops, and it’s pretty nice. It uses about 35 MB of RAM, not that I care; RAM [in small amounts] is there to be used, and Windows 7′s memory management will probably kick in if I run a program that needs realtime attention.
It detected a few trojan samples that I had on hand, and did not think my DLL injector was a virus (like NOD32 did). I like it so far, but I’ll wait for some reviews from AV-Comparatives to migrate it to my main computer.
Currently I’m using NOD32 on my main computer, because Kaspersky (2009 it was at the time) took 30 seconds to a minute to run new programs for the first time (and I have a quad core Q6600 and 4GB of RAM). It slowed down the computer noticeably, which changed my opinion of their product.
NOD32 isn’t perfect either; it takes a few seconds sometimes to scan downloads, which is unacceptable for small files. But at least when I run a program I never have before, the system doesn’t appear to do nothing for 45 seconds, as it did with Kaspersky 2009. (And this was after turning heuristic analysis to low!)
I found Avira unacceptable because at each system startup, it NAGS you with a huge ad for their premium product. I understand that they’re giving you a product for free, but I don’t like this behavior.
Raymond, you said that Avira managed to “detect” all 23 threats, but what about removing them? I remember a year back when I read a review about Avira. It said that Avira had the highest detection rate among all the other AVs, but it also had the worst removal rate. Is that still true?
Hi der Ray,
Why i Think dat Ray u got paid from Avira peoples, to write these positive reviews and asking everyone to switch to this AV.
i think even u r getting paid to write positive reviews of all softwares…….u want to promote.
waiting for ur reply
thanks….
Ray,
You’re completely right – Avira Personal is THE BEST of all free antivirus.
Thanks for your reply and important opinion about it!
I have been using Avira for about 6 months nhs now and am quite happy with the program. Before this I was an AVG user for several years. We have 4 pc’s in my house and the others are still running AVG which to be honest I feel is a great AV. About 6 months ago I started having problems with my AVG on my PC and I removed it and download a new copy twice and for some reason it would not work properly. Having tried AVAST before I decided to try AVIRA as I had heard some nice things about the program. I downloaded Avira and have never looked back, it works very well and I recommend it highly as a free AVG,
Ray man i know that AVIRA it’s good (and Kaspersky the best payd version) … don’t think sow
have u try G DATA IS 2010 ? is the best AV, very cheeper, a very goood AV with all u need
sow pls don’t forget it … G DATA 1st AV
here are two promo keys for panda internet security 2010:
44LULP-47826452
LHAEZ5-47771252
Yes avira is the best of all free av out there. it is extremely fast for scanning, only beaten in the paid sector by maybe 2 programs (one being kis the other one being gdata). It has a detection rate which is above 99% and pretty much the best rootkit finder there is (except maybe gmer which doesnt count) and it doesnt need much resources, not for space or memory
It does have some problems. If malware has been installed on the system and was than found by avira it will never ever ever delete any keys which is a terrible shame (unlike mse which will clean almost all keys but apart from that is not even close) and yes from time to time it has falspos but mostly driver or hacking software and the action can always be chosen for those
If you want to use an alternative free software look at panda cloud, mse or avast even so I would always recommend avira above the others, dont use avg , excuse my french but its &/%$
You couldn’t be more right, Ray.
Avira is the best AV :)
Great review Ray.
Avira Free WAS good, back when they were updating. Now-a-days, they seem to have given that up because Avira Free has refused to update for the last several weeks. Their website says “oopsie” and gives a URL for a manual update. Even IF it were not the most cumbersome process possible (and it is) having to manually update is stupid.
It doesn’t really matter how good an AV *might* be, if it doesn’t update it isn’t much good. Forget Avira Free, and forget Avira Paid as well for their shameful practice of (essentially) abandoning their free product.
My favorite is A-Squared (Paid) that recently offered a free subscription.
isn’t antivir’s detection rate consistently higher than kaspersky’s.
this pcw review indicates a 98.9% rate for antivir:
pcworld.com/reviews/product/290836/review/antivir_personal.html
while this one rates kaspersky at 95.6%:
pcworld.com/reviews/product/44057/review/internet_security_2009.html
i use online armor (free), with antivir (free) and threatfire (free) and prevx (free as long as you don’t want it to remove anything).
(sometimes i switch to pc tools (free) or comodo (free) or outpost (free) firewalls depending on stability/compatibility)
combine that with only surfing the web from a guest account using firefox with no script, and on-demand scans from spyware doctor (free from google pack) and malwarebytes and i’d say i’m pretty well protected
all for a total cost of $0.
why do you recommend a paid product that doesn’t work as well as a free one?
ps — you should do your write ups in a text editor then transfer to your blog. seriously…dude…really
Raymond. Good Morning.
I hope all is well with you and family.
Yes! I whole-heartedly agree with your assessment of Avira.
I recently switched to Avira Free and have not looked back since:
I had previously used another wonderful free AV app only to discover that something had disabled its system in my computer during the recent Hotmail attack!
(I had used one of those e-mail notification things that forwarded email to my desktop – - I believe this is how my e-mail account was compromised so I changed the password in my account)
BTW, did you know that passwords that consist of increments of seven [7] different characters provide the best defense for brute-force attacks. The more increments of 7 (7 … 14 … 21 etc. – - the better the security!
I was flabbergasted that I had been Intruded upon and so after the attack I quickly did an online search to find an alternate AV app – - Avira Free.
(I was so happy as I found out later that it ranked #2 for effectiveness by another testing lab)
The #1 app I did not choose ’cause I found it wasn’t that effective when I used it some years ago.)
In addition, Avira scans SO M-A-N-Y More files in my computer even the Archived ones. SO Now I am feeling more comfortable knowing that Avira (which does constant updates automatically) along with good ol’ boys Malwarebytes + Solidly-Built Firewall, Online Armor by Tallemu are protecting my computer.
I realize that no computer security system (except for possibly the VirtualReturnSystem [VRS]) can give you 100% computer protection but the 3 software mentioned above is a very good start for one’s peace of mind.
Holler!
NYC
Not a bad review of Avira, i’ve used it in the past and found it didn’t use much resources; I just didn’t like the method when it found something, there was no button to “fix it”, just view the report, lol…but that was before Version 9
how is it compared to Panda Cloud Antivirus?
I want to say that according to my regular usage of antivirus its proven that avast is best antivirus in among all paid and free antivirus because it takes low resource and interrupts too less i am using it from 5-6 years and it never gave me single chance to blame it so i will go to only avast. AVP is good but avast is one step ahead because of its ability to scan in booting process by which we can delete viruses which are hard to delete in running windows
i feel Avast or Avira>AVG
The only problem with Avast is that it gives a lot of false positives.
Just dont use AVG, seriously, it sucks.
My tech recommends NOT using Avira….says he has had to clean several systems lately that were using it. I’ll stick with Avast, thanks.
good man
NAV 2010 trial for 90 days is available for downloads
It is one using less memory!
kool review ray .. i use avira free (disabling tha nag screen wohoo ;) ) i believe is second to gdata internet security..in the av test.. but ill stick with this also have malwarebytes antimalware .spybot and search ..id urge every one to use a host file list as well ,, mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
hi,
avira is really good one… am using 8 years
Thanks ray, I have been using avira both the free version and the premium sucurity suit (when promo’s are avail.) and both have been great on my pc. I myself have not had any problems with avira. So far it has been great on my pc. I will continue to use it as long as it is avail. It works great with xp and windows 7.
For me there’s nothing better than Norton IS 2010
Super fast , found 3 trojans KIS 2010 missed(confirmed on virustotal), never slows down surfing , and never messes up with ports that’s used with my Java apps
KIS 2010 is so slow , it should be considered a virus :)
Hello Ray, thank you for this information but I have a question for you: how I can obtain a license avira for more than three months? … if you know, I’d like you to share this Infomación as always you do. Thank you!
Thank you for those informations. I tested both avira and rising antivirus and I think that rising is better. It uses less memory, it’s totaly free without any ads, it do updates as often and very quickly and it detects some virus that avira ignores.
My best regards.
thanks raymond..
i used avira free after my kis computerbild has expired…
but sometimes this free antivirus launch some propaganda pop-ups..
can you post a tip to fix thiss issue?
until there.. the iobit 360 is solving my problems..
Lots of news about microsoft security essentials. Hope u can give it a try too.
Nice article, Thanks
Thanks Ray… :)
Bundle of thanks
yes it can detect a lot of malwares, but i don’t think it can delete them….
Thanks for the information by luck i got today PANDA Internet Security promotion key as per their web site the promotion was only for US citizens but i just tried my luck applying and received activation code today.
Pls Ray if you can give review about PANDA 2010 will be grateful currently i have installed and happy with their interface and low memory consumption.
shihz
so it’s better than avast 4.8 but it wouldn’t be better than avast 5 :D
Surely Avira is the best. But can’t protect my email since I’ve been using POP3. So I put AVG as my email guardian. Double free AV, double resources too (yup, heavy load indeed, but what can I say, only premium Avira have this service).
So Raymond, could you please review new free AVG 9 next time coz I haven’t upgrade my AVG 8.5 yet. I am afraid the new one make my CPU burn to death.
Thanks for this review.
I usually use Avast free version but i heard a lot about avira is much better. So, i will consider trying it sooner especially with premium license.
You are right Ray, at Avira
I am using this for last 1 year
would you please refer other softwares which are necessary for our computer
like best spyware,
internet security?
please inform meat my email
i shall be thanful to you.
Sorry Raymond ! I agree with you on the whole review with the exception Kaspersky priority antivirus.
Avira Premium security is the best.
Have a nice day!
thanx for ur review …Ray
you save my time. Now i can directly go for download
I’m pretty sure Ray answered virtually all of the questions above…he said this is THE BEST of the free anti-virus programs, better than AVG, Avast, or any of the rest. Obviously Ray knows about all the other free anti-virus programs out there, so when he says it’s better than all the rest, you can take that to the bank.
Just my two cents.
Thank you for the review Raymond. I was one of the lucky winners of your Kaspersky Antivirus 2010 giveaway a while back and had the chance to use it for a number of months. Before that I was using Avira Antivir Free Edition. KAV 2010 turned out to be much more of a CPU hog than I would have expected. It took more CPU resources than all my other programs and it vaulted its usage from 50-100% whenever I launched a new program. Plus it was incompatible with my favorite free firewall, Comodo and my favorite task manager, AnVir (Kaspersky support was either unable or unwilling to recommend any free firewalls that are compatible – almost like they want to force you to buy KIS along with it). In the end I found KAV more trouble than it was worth and I went back to Avira Antivir Free. Now my computer is fast again and I can run the software that I want. I have also tried AVG and Avast!, but over the years I’ve found Antivir to perform the best.
Great to know it’s a good antivirus, as Rising Free Antivirus has an update problem on Windows 7. Thanks for the tip.
Ray.. even i have been using this antivirus (free version) for some time now.. and trust me.. its wonderful… No need for the premium version. Just get the iobit security 360(1 yr license being given free) along with it.. and its low in using system resources too mine being a 512 mb ram…
Avira is the best…!!!
Yeah…Ray I have used Avira Antivir Premium & Personal both and really agree with you.I also advise my friends to use it as a free antivirus(If they have nor NIS or KIS Keys).
But one request to you would you plz write a review on Panda Internet Security 2010?
wow thanks man
i think that avg is good
do you recommend avg?
Ray,what about Avast, do you have any review about Avast ?
O, forgot ….
Greetings from Belgium, did you visit us to ?
Thanks for this one, now the question Raymond.
You say for AntiDrive-By, RescueSystem, Enhanced email protection there are good replacements.
Which do you recomment ?
Many thanks in advance.
Kilunarei
raymond next time plz test quick heal internet security
i don’t know much abut it
great
Thank you Raymond for the review, I’ll try it out on my brothers computer and see how it works.
Best regards,
what a great review their ray, i applied your recommendation to my self kaspersky for paid and avira for free :D
thanks ray :D
Finally thanks One again I got the 92 day license .
thanks raymond this is very useful article……
is better than AVG??
This article would be more useful if you also run the same tests with the other free avs and posted the results.
Please consider running the same tests with AVG and MSE.
Good review. Through, I would it have been more complete if you were to comment anything on its false positive since Avira’s rate of false positive is high.
No matter, it was still good review.